Eskom lost another generating unit at the Kusile power station on Monday afternoon, forcing the state-owned utility to escalate load shedding to stage 4.
Browsing: Jan Oberholzer
Eskom chief operating officer Jan Oberholzer has warned that the current bout of load shedding could get worse if there are further plant breakdowns.
Eskom chief operating officer Jan Oberholzer has pleaded for an end to talk shops and for an urgent start to building new electricity generation capacity.
Eskom has had four fewer days of load shedding in 2022 to date, compared to the same period in 2021, though the extent of the rolling power cuts has been more severe.
The state-owned power utility is burning through nine million litres of diesel a day to support the system during the current generation crisis.
Eskom’s rolling power cuts will drag on until at least next Monday – meaning almost a full week of load shedding, after the utility started cutting the power at 5pm this past Monday.
Those units in Eskom’s coal fleet that do work are being utilised at a rate of more than 90% versus an international benchmark of 70% – and that concerns lenders, an energy expert has said.
So far this year, Eskom has experienced 342 unit trips against a target of 196, 4.61GW of load losses against a target of 3.97GW and 23.1% unplanned load losses against a target of 18%.
Eskom chief operating officer Jan Oberholzer said load shedding is not expected during the upcoming local government elections.
Eskom has vowed to continue with its accelerated maintenance programme throughout the summer months.