Eskom has confirmed that load shedding will be downgraded to Stage 1 on Friday.
Eskom chair and acting CEO Jabu Mabuza told a media briefing on Thursday evening that stage 1 load shedding would take place from 9 am to 23h00 on Friday.
Mabuza apologized to the nation, especially matriculants who are writing exams and businesses, for the negative impact caused by the unexpected outages.
Eskom has blamed the current wave of power cuts which began on Wednesday on boiler leaks at six power-generating units. Some of these units are now online.
‘If it has to be done, it has to be done’
However, he added, load shedding could not be written off as a possibility.
“We can never ever say that there will be no load shedding,” he said. “While we go out of our way to avoid it, if it has to be done, it has to be done at the shallowest of levels, during the shortest periods of time.
“As for saying there would be no load shedding, I could never make such a commitment.”
Had Eskom not taken the decision not to load shed, SA would have been “postponing the inevitable and found [itself] worse off”, he added.
Also contributing to the supply constraints was the failure of a conveyor feeding coal from Exxaro’s Grootegeluk mine to the Medupi power station in Lephalale, Limpopo, which broke down on Saturday. The belt is still not working and Eskom is investigating why it failed.
A spokesperson earlier told Fin24 that coal was now transported with bulldozers between the mine and Medupi, a distance of around 11km.
Since Saturday, Eskom has been relying on open cycle gas turbines “extensively” to make up for the electricity shortfall. But the diesel stocks that fuel these turbines were running low, which contributed to the load shedding.
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Source: News24
