Special Eskom Board meeting with Minister Gordhan
11 February 2019
The Board of Eskom today convened an urgent meeting with the company’s executive management and the Minister of Public Enterprises, Mr Pravin Gordhan, following the unexpected introduction of load shedding from this past Sunday.
The initial schedule was to implement stage 2 load shedding on Monday as a result of generation shortages over the weekend and constraints in diesel supply. However, earlier today, Eskom implemented stage 4 load shedding.
The escalation from stage 2 to stage 4 load shedding was caused by a further seven generating units that tripped within a period of five hours. This report on the causes, including all the challenges of the new and old power stations, was much of the deliberations between the Board, management and the Department of Public Enterprises in today’s meeting that lasted for over to six hours.
By this evening, four units had returned to service and it is expected that the remaining three will be back to service by tomorrow morning. We will have a systems- and operations update within the next 24 hours.