For the third day in the row, Eskom will cut the power during the evening peak, with stage-2 load shedding to take place from 5pm to 10pm on Wednesday.
The third day of peak-time load shedding comes after two generating units — one at Hendrina and other at Matimba — were taken offline for repairs. One generation unit at arnot Power station was returned to service.
A generation unit each at Kusile and Tutuka power stations are expected to return to service on Wednesday afternoon, though this won’t be sufficient to prevent the peak-time blackouts.
Eskom said it currently has only 2.3GW of plant offline due to planned maintenance, while another 16GW of capacity is unavailable due to breakdowns.
“The onset of winter has seen increased demand and this will lead to capacity constraints throughout this period, particularly during the evening and morning peaks. Unfortunately, this will generally require the implementation of load shedding during the evening peaks,” Eskom said. — (c) 2022 NewsCentral Media