Eskom implements stage 1 load-shedding

In a statement released by Eskom, in the past seven days (168 hours), the company has only had to load shed for about seven hours and 47 minutes.

“We would like to thank all electricity users for responding to our message to save,” the statement read. Eskom said it performed even more planned maintenance over the past long weekend, surpassing the first phase of its weekend maintenance festival. “We were able to perform maintenance on 2 608 megawatts (MW) of the generating plant. The maintenance team also returned 2 304 MW of generating capacity back to service over this period,” the company said.

Eskom’s acting CEO Brian Molefe said, “This is an improvement from last weekend’s maintenance festival where technicians carried out planned maintenance on 2 303 MW of our generating plant, returning 1 453 MW back to service over that period.” The generating units that were taken out for scheduled maintenance over the long weekend included Duvha Unit 2 (575 MW), Hendrina Unit 6 (190 MW), Komati Unit 9 (114 MW), Kriel Unit 6 (475 MW), Majuba Unit 6 (669 MW) and Tutuka Unit 4 (585 MW).

The units that have been returned back online are Duvha Unit 2 (575 MW), Majuba Unit 6 (669 MW), Kriel Unit 5 (475MW) and Tutuka Unit 4 (585 MW). Eskom said it plans to continue the maintenance drive to close in on the backlog that has accumulated over the years due to the commitment to ‘keep the lights on’. Molefe appealed to electricity users “once more to continue using electricity sparingly to allow us enough room to continue with the requisite maintenance so that in the long run our power stations can perform more efficiently”.

According to Eskom, it needs a minimum of 3 000 MW and maximum of 5 000 MW buffer either through supply- or demand-side options to close the maintenance backlog and avoid load shedding.