Load shedding on the cards after five units trip at Kriel Power Station

Eskom has announced that it may be forced to implement load shedding at short notice  after five units tripped in quick succession in the high voltage yard at Kriel Power Station.

The dark lords of Megawatt Park say the faults occurred during the early hours of Monday morning.

Spokesperson Sikonathi Mantshantsha says the fault, which appears to be related to the heavy mist conditions experienced at the time, is under investigation.

“The first fault caused units 1, 2 and 3 of the power station to trip, while the second fault tripped units 4 and 5. Unit 6 was offline at the time. The incident removed more than 2 000MW of generation capacity from the network.

“While some generation units at other power stations are expected to return to service during the day, these will take time to load to full capacity. Should there be any further loss of generation capacity during the day, or some units fail to return to service as anticipated, load shedding may be required to be implemented at short notice,” Mantshantsha said.

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He added that the parastatal currently has 1 018MW on planned maintenance, while another 17 022MW of capacity is unavailable due to breakdowns.

“Eskom’s teams are working hard to return as many of the units to service as possible.”

Eskom has like always reminded the public that load shedding is implemented only as a last resort to protect the national grid.

“We therefore urge all South Africans to continue using electricity sparingly especially during these uncertain times on the power system.”

Eskom says it will communicate promptly should the necessity arise.

The announcement of possible load shedding at short notice comes shortly after the parastatal said there will be no load shedding over the weekend and that it will be reduced to stage 1 between 4pm and midnight on Friday.

Eskom has been struggling to keep the lights on as a cold snap swept across the country last week.

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