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In a power alert issued on Sunday, Eskom said it “will regretfully continue to implement” stage 4 load shedding due to “unlawful industrial action”.
Several power stations had been impacted by planned maintenance and repairs, while at others, “the full complement of workers have not reported for duty”.
“Eskom appeals to its labour partner and striking employees to put the people of South Africa first, respect the law and desist from unlawful and undemocratic conduct”.
The “unlawful and unprotected labour action” caused major delays in effecting maintenance and repairs, Eskom explained.
“As a result, unplanned generation losses have not been reduced as planned, which has compelled Eskom to continue taking precautionary measures to conserve generation capacity and safeguard plants from damage”.
Due to this, stage 4 will be extended until 5 am on Wednesday morning. The power utility initially said load shedding would be in place until 5am on Monday.
At the time of publishing, Eskom had 3,894MW on planned maintenance, while another 15,472MW was lost as a result of breakdowns.
“Currently, approximately 4,000MW of generation capacity is at risk due to the illegal strike action”.
As such, the embattled power utility must replenish emergency reserves to “be able to react to unforeseen circumstances”.
However, if the illegal strike continues, prolonged delays and further damage to infrastructure would have a severe impact on “an already constrained power system”.
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Eskom also blames the lack of generation capacity (and a loss of 600MW) on a fault line in Mozambique’s Hydroelectricia de Cahora Bassa (HCB).
The Cahora Bassa dam on the Zambezi River in Mozambique’s western province of Tete has a capacity of 2,075MW, of which most (65% of the plant’s generation) is sold to South Africa and Zimbabwe.
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