Eskom power grid ‘under extreme pressure’
The public has been urged to reduce their electricity consumption, as the power grid is once again under pressure.
ESKOM has warned that the power grid would once again be ‘under extreme pressure’ during the next two days. This time the major power utility has blamed the depletion of water reserves for the alert.
The public has been urged to use electricity sparingly to avoid load shedding and power outages.
Load shedding was halted on Monday, despite a reduced capacity of 1 300MW which was reported on Sunday. According to Eskom, a silo (which housed 10 000 tons of coal) cracked at the Majuba Power Station in Mpumalanga on Saturday, raising power outage concerns.
No load shedding had been implemented since the crisis had been reported, however, Andrew Etzinger, Eskom spokesman, said that there was still a risk of load shedding during the evenings after 6pm.
In a press release the power supplier also announced that repairs and damage control efforts at the station had been progressing ‘better than anticipated’, and that engineers had been working around the clock to connect coal feeder units to the station, which have increased the power supply significantly.
The collapse of the storage silo severely constrained the power supply capacity, as the coal supplies to all six of the units at the station was reduced. Subsequently the eThekwini Municipality implemented a stage 2 load shedding schedule to avert the crisis.
