POWER ALERT 2
Stage 2 rotational loadshedding moves up to Stage 4 from 14:00 today
Friday, 06 December 2019: Eskom has lost additional generation units this morning and with units not having returned to service as scheduled, unavailable capacity has increased to about 13 000MW. This with a higher demand of about 1000MW, necessitates loadshedding to move up from Stage 2 to Stage 4 from 14:00 today. This is expected to continue until 06:00 tomorrow morning (Saturday). Eskom will communicate if there is a change on the power system and a drop in the loadshedding stage.
In addition, the increase in the loadshedding stage is intended, among other things, to cater for unplanned further trips and to create capacity to replenish water reserves for our pumped storage schemes. We continue to utilise diesel and water resources at our open cycle gas turbines and pumped storage schemes respectively, to supplement capacity.
With the incessant rain, we are beginning to experience coal-handling problems at a number of our power stations as a result of wet coal, which has led to generation units being unable to produce power. If the wet weather persists, we are likely to implement loadshedding throughout the weekend.
Stage 4 calls for 4000MW to be rotationally loadshed nationally at a given period.