Eskom implements stage 5 load shedding until further notice

Eskom on Saturday implemented stage 5 load shedding after several units at three different power stations broke down.

This after Eskom on Friday announced it would downgrade the rolling blackouts to stage 4 from 5am on Saturday, and downgraded to stage 2 from Sunday until Monday morning.

Stage 5 load shedding

Breakdowns, high demand

The power utility shifted the blame towards the public saying in addition to the breakdowns, “unusually high demand” was the reason for the escalation.

Meanwhile, a generating unit each broke down at the Hendrina, Kendal and Kriel power stations on Saturday.

Therefore, Eskom said load shedding “has unfortunately been escalated to Stage 5” until further notice

Eskom did warn South Africans back in November that rotational power cuts will remain in place and that “stages of load shedding will be more erratic”.

At the time, Eskom said it was facing two major challenges:

• An increase in unplanned breakdowns,
• No money to spend on diesel.

Koeberg Unit 1 goes offline

Koeberg Unit 1 was taken offline on Saturday after the planned refuelling, routine maintenance and repairs to three boilers were postponed on 8 December.

Energy expert Ted Blom said the likelihood of stage 8 is high due to the “copy-paste, spaza shop maintenance” at Koeberg.

Eskom said it will release a full statement pertaining to the Koeberg project in due course.

Breakdowns on Saturday

Residents in Kagiso and Lusaka were left without electricity on Saturday after powerlines were damaged during a storm.

The power utility said it was “assessing the extent of the damages” and could not provide an estimated time of return at the time of publishing.

Technicians also attended to an outage in Diepkloof Zone 5 and was again unable to provide an estimated time of return.

Outages have also been reported in Pimville, Protea North, and other parts of Soweto.

Vandalism in KZN

Earlier on Sunday, Eskom said an outage in Darnall, KwaZulu Natal was due to vandalism of cables on the network breaking.

Eskom said vandalism was “a persistent problem as criminals are targetting electrical infrastructure” during rolling blackouts.

The utility’s Central East Cluster General Manager, Agnes Mlambo, said “vandalism incidents retard [sic] Eskom’s efforts to improve the quality of electricity supply to customers” in KwaZulu Natal and the Free State.