Eskom battles vandalism, severe weather as stage 2 load shedding continues

While stage 2 load shedding is underway, parts of South Africa were also plunged into darkness as Eskom battled severe weather conditions and vandalism of its infrastructure.

The embattled power utility was forced to implement rolling blackouts from 9pm on Saturday until 5am on Monday morning, due to loss of generation capacity.

Latest load shedding updates

Vandalism

Parts of Randfontein were without electricity due to vandalism infrastructure. At the time, Eskom said teams were working around the clock to restore supply to customers.

Stretford Extension 4 was left without electricity when residents chased Eskom technicians away and prevented them entry into the area.

Eskom said it had no choice but dispatch teams later in day “when it was safe for [technicians] to work”.

Severe weather conditions

On Saturday, Eskom said its technical teams were “experiencing a high number of faults across Gauteng due to heavy rains”, and called on customers to remain patient.

“Technicians have been dispatched. There may be delays due to the high number of faults.”

Technicians also attended to outages caused by the weather in Glen Austin, Chartwell, and Sandton

Meanwhile, heavy rainfall in Stanger, Mandini, Eshowe, and Richards Bay in KwaZulu-Natal hampered fault repairs caused by the severe weather conditions in the region.

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Stage 2 load shedding

Eskom said load shedding was necessary due to the loss of a unit each at the Medupi, Arnot and Kendal power stations, and the delay in return of a unit returningat Tutuka.

“In addition to the above, the failure of the coal conveyors at Medupi led to reduced output at the station. While this has since been rectified, it will take some time to recover the full operations”.

At the time of publishing on Saturday, total breakdowns have increased to 14,727MW, while planned maintenance currently stand at 6,711MW capacity.