Eskom rushes back to stage 6 load shedding as breakdowns hit fleet

In the early hours of Friday morning, Eskom announced the implementation of stage 6 load shedding from 5am “until further notice” after breakdowns intensified.

It said units failed at Tutuka, Kriel, Duvha and Kendal power stations.

Three of the four – Tutuka, Kendal and Duvha – are Eskom’s worst-performing plants with nearly half of all breakdowns coming from these power stations.

Will Eskom restore units?

Any hopes of load shedding being eased this weekend rest on whether it is able to restore any units by Saturday morning.

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Eskom hasn’t shared an updated breakdown figure since Monday, when breakdowns were at 17 325MW. The situation would’ve eased somewhat by Tuesday when it reduced the intensity of load shedding during the day marginally (stage 5 from 05h00 to 16h00).

However, lower renewable generation at the evening peak on Tuesday – basically, a lack of wind – meant that the utility was forced to implement load curtailment stage 4 while stage 6 load shedding to normal consumers was underway.

On that night, it cut 1 353MW of supply to large industrial users and an additional 447MW to the aluminium smelters under its interruptible load supply mechanism.

Eskom relying on OCGTs

Eskom has been relying heavily on its fleet of open cycle gas turbines (OCGTs) during the evening peaks, even with stage 6 load shedding underway. These can provide up to 1 500MW of power. This week, it has used these for at least 1 000MW each night (and often to balance supply during the day as well).

It burned a ton of diesel on Saturday following Koeberg unit two’s trip. Its 12 OCGTs were practically running all day, covering the 900MW lost from Koeberg.

That unit was returned to service on Sunday and synchronised to the grid on Monday morning. Unit one remains offline due a long-term outage (replacement of its three steam generators) and was originally due to be back on the grid by June.

The most recent date for completion is understood to be August, with the project running at least 45 days behind schedule.

This article originally appeared on Moneyweb and was republished with permission. Read the original article here.

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