Eskom has taken Unit One of Koeberg offline earlier than planned for scheduled maintenance, exarcerbating the risk of regulator load shedding in the months ahead.
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Eskom was scheduled to implement stage-2 load shedding from 10pm on Tuesday, despite many industries being closed for the year-end holidays and the tightened lockdown restrictions.
Eskom is broke and can’t invest in any further capacity. Independent power producers will have to do it, and they will need an independent transmission and market operator that they trust.
Eskom is headed for another full-year a loss as fundamental problems remain even after making a profit of R83-million in the first half of its fiscal year.
South African industry is already starting to wind down for the Christmas holidays, yet Eskom can’t keep the lights on — on a weekend!
Though Amazon.com is staying mum for now on details of its planned “utility-scale” renewable energy project in South Africa, it has emerged that it will source the power from a giant solar farm to be built in the Northern Cape.
Amazon.com said on Thursday that it is adding 26 new “utility-scale” wind and solar projects around the world, including facilities in South Africa, bringing the total number of such projects to 127.
Renewable energy procured from private generators contributed more than a quarter of the peak-time electricity South Africans consumed during the first half of 2020.
Nigeria’s national electricity grid collapsed on Sunday, the Transmission Company of Nigeria said in a statement. Power outages in Nigeria are common but a system collapse is unusual.
The ANC has proposed using state-run unemployment and compensation fund surpluses to help rescue Eskom, raising the ire of labour unions.