Six of Eskom’s generation units tripped on Monday, dramatically increasing the chances of the return of rolling blackouts this week.
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Eskom’s gross debt surged to R480-billion after the struggling state-owned power utility borrowed from its lines of credit, documents show.
Eskom’s own mishandling of a repair contract led to the closure of its Camden power plant, a move that worsened power cuts by South Africa’s near-monopoly electricity provider, the company said.
South Africa can fix Eskom’s balance sheet by transferring its guaranteed debt to the government’s balance sheet, according to the former CEO of Goldman Sachs Group in sub-Saharan Africa.
State-owned power monopoly Eskom cannot say how long a new round of power cuts that began on Friday will last, its spokesman Sikonathi Mantshantsha said.
Promoted | IT experts from major South African companies recently shared their experiences at a TechCentral CIO Vision Roundtable on DevOps, and hosted by Micro Focus.
Eskom will escalate the load shedding level from 1 to 2 at 2pm on Wednesday after it blamed high demand for the need to ramp up the rolling nationwide blackouts.
While some generating units have returned to service, Eskom will implement stage-1 load shedding on Wednesday. The power utility is set to implement stage 1 from 9am until 10pm.
Eskom may have broken tender laws in concluding a 2005 agreement with Black & Veatch that increased more than 100-fold in cost, according to a probe of the contract.
Eskom will implement load shedding for the first time in nearly four months, the state-owned utility said on Friday, as plant breakdowns reduced its ability to meet demand.