South Africans are waking up to the bad news that Eskom will be implementing Stage 4 load shedding.
In a statement released on early Wednesday on X (formerly Twitter), the power utility said it was due to “insufficient emergency reserves”.
“Due to insufficient emergency reserves and generation capacity as a result of four units not returning to service as planned, Stage 4 load shedding was implemented this morning at 2.31 am until further notice,” said Eskom, adding that it will monitor the system and communicate should any significant changes occur.
The stage 4 implementation comes on the heels of Eskom implementing Stage 2 load shedding for seven hours on Tuesday due to the “imminent forced shutdown of two generating units”.
Stage 3 load shedding was then implemented from 4 pm until 5 am on Wednesday.
The recent news of load shedding might come as a surprise as Eskom has announced that its stream generators on Koeberg’s Unit 1 have been replaced successfully. However, the unit is expected to be synchronized to the grid only by the end of the month.
Once the Unit 1 commissioning is complete, the three steam generators on Unit 2 are scheduled for replacement, leaving doubts about the impact in solving current load-shedding challenges.
“The replacement of the steam generators was identified in the licence application for long-term operation of Koeberg that was submitted to the National Nuclear Regulator (NNR), as being a prerequisite for the station to operate safely beyond its original licensed operating period of 40 years (beyond 2024),” Eskom said.
-IOL
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