The power-supply situation in South Africa has taken a sudden turn for the worse, with Eskom said on Thursday evening saying it plans to implement overnight stage-2 load shedding from 10pm to 5am on Friday.
“Today we lost three additional generation units and had to use our emergency reserves in order to meet demand throughout the day,” Eskom said in a statement.
“As a result, our emergency reserves are at critically low levels and need to be replenished overnight in order to meet tomorrow’s forecast demand in electricity.”
The risk of load shedding on Friday remains high if generating units do not return overnight as scheduled, the utility said.
“Eskom has been working around the clock to avoid load shedding this week given the constrained state of the system. Despite our best efforts, we have to implement load shedding this evening.”
It said its emergency command response centre is working closely with recovery teams to return units from planned and unplanned maintenance.
“A concerted collective effort to reduce demand can help lessen the level of load shedding. As such, we strongly urge customers to assist by helping to reduce demand by using electricity sparingly.” — (c) 2019 NewsCentral Media