Load Shedding to Stay Until Saturday Early Morning

There is no improvement in South Africa’s energy supply as households and businesses will need to contend with power cuts for the rest of the week.

Eskom has announced that Stage 2 load shedding will start at 9am today and continue until 5am on Saturday.

The utility indicates that the delay in the returning of generation units to service has exacerbated the situation and has hampered the ability to replenish emergency reserves.

Eskom anticipates the strain on the electricity grid will ease over the weekend when Koeberg’s Unit 1 is expected to return. Another five units are also expected back online during the week. But the embattled utility warns that a number of generation units are running with the risk of failure. It adds that it cannot attend to this due to the current capacity constraints.

The total breakdowns stand at some 13 000MW while planned maintenance is at over 5 000MW.

[Picture: Unsplash]