ETHEKWINI Municipality implemented stage 2 of the load shedding schedule after being advised by Eskom of constrained electricity supply on Sunday, 2 November.
Stage 2 means that 2 blocks are switched off at the same time. The power supply capacity was severely constrained yesterday, due to the loss of 1 800 MW at the Majuba Power Station, a situation caused by damage to the central coal storage silo.
A silo, which houses over 10 000 tons of coal, cracked yesterday. This impacted on coal supplies to all six units at the power station resulting in a reduced capacity of 1 300MW.
The load-shedding schedule and the affected areas can be found here . Eskom engineers are investigating the cause of the incident and more details will be released in due course.
“We urge our customers to switch off all appliances during the outage and only restore as needed when the power does return. This will assist to prevent nuisance tripping and extended outages.
Please be patient and reduce all non-essential loads to assist us in stabilising the electricity supply grid,” said Tozi Mthethwa of the eThekwini Municipality.
The duration of the load shedding is unknown at this stage.
