A powerful cold front that swept across South Africa overnight, coupled with a loss of generation capacity, means Eskom will implement load shedding from 4pm to 9pm on Thursday.
“Eskom regrets to inform the public that due to shortage of generation capacity, coupled with the severely cold weather in parts of the country, stage-2 load shedding will be implemented from 4pm to 9pm tonight.”
A generation unit each at Tutuka and Medupi power stations were “forced offline” on Thursday afternoon, increasing the constraints on the system. Two units at the same power stations, which had been expected to return to service on Thursday afternoon, will no longer be brought back online as scheduled.
Earlier, Eskom warned any deterioration in generation capacity would likely result in load shedding.
“Breakdowns currently total 14.1GW, while planned maintenance is 2.9GW of capacity.” — (c) 2021 NewsCentral Media