Energy analyst Ted Blom says that if Eskom fails to resolve its stage 6 load shedding crisis before Thursday (8 December), there is a high likelihood that that country will move to stage 7 load shedding before the weekend.
“We will move to stage 7 because we’re about to lose another 1000 megawatts when they take unit 1 of Koeberg down for refurbishment for six months,” he said.
“We’re on the cusp of record-breaking stage 7 load shedding.”
Eskom has ramped up the rolling power cuts meaning businesses and households may have to contend with up to 10 hours a day without electricity.
The last time stage 6 load shedding was implemented was in September.
Eskom said the implementation of stage 6 was due to a high number of breakdowns since midnight and the need to preserve its remaining emergency generation reserves.
The utility warned South Africans in mid-November that its plan was to take the Koeberg unit down on 8 December as part of the planned maintenance at the station. Koeberg unit 1 is the most reliable unit in the Eskom fleet and will be down until mid-2023, pulling 920MW from the grid.
Energy analyst Hartmut Winkler said the planned maintenance of the Koeberg Power Station over the next few months will set the country’s energy supply even further back.
“Problem is Eskom is only able to hold the fort by trying to keep on repairing the plants that keep breaking down. We are talking about half the coal generating capacity not being available and that really is much higher than any kind of power utility. The repairs would take far too long and Eskom doesn’t have that sort of money.”
Meanwhile, Eskom says to restore the reserve generation capacity, the ailing power utility has no choice but to implement the highest load shedding the country has ever seen.
Source: Engineering News, Eyewitness News, Business Tech, My Broadband, image from Twitter: @FirstTakeSA