Eskom to implement stage 2 load shedding from 9pm on Monday

Eskom has announced that it will implement stage 2 load shedding again from 9pm on Monday until 5am on Tuesday to “conserve” and “replenish” emergency reserves.

“Since midnight we have lost the unit each at Camden, Kusile, Duvha and Matla power stations. Furthermore, the return of a unit at Kusile and two units at Majuba power stations are delayed,” said Eskom in a statement on Monday.

“Total breakdowns amount to 16 261MW while planned maintenance is 5 350MW of capacity as we continue with the reliability maintenance. Eskom appeals to all South Africans to reduce the usage of electricity and to switch off nonessential items.”

Further breakdowns could, however, force Eskom to implement load shedding sooner or to extend the load shedding beyond Tuesday morning.

This comes after Eskom suspended load shedding on Sunday night, ahead of its original announcement which had stated that it would continue into the early hours of Monday morning.

Eskom implemented Stage 2 load shedding last Wednesday, due to a shortage of generation capacity.

The power giant said that it needed to urgently replenish its reserve supplies of water and diesel after several unplanned breakdowns two weeks ago.

The power utility said load shedding was the prudent step to take to prevent a national blackout.

During a state of the systems briefing last week, Eskom CEO Andre De Ruyter likened the condition of the national grid to a “cardiac arrest”.

“We had the system equivalent of a cardiac arrest, and load shedding is the prudent step to take to prevent a national blackout,” said De Ruyter.

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By Friday, Eskom said it had made good progress in replenishing its stocks and moved the country to Stage 1 load shedding.

Eskom’s Project Director Philip Dukahse last week admitted that Eskom had underestimated the maintenance process.

“The key to planned outages is readiness. We need 80% readiness from the time the unit goes offline,” said Dukashe.

Additional reporting by Narissa Subramoney