Turn off the lights… Is Mzansi headed for a dark December?
Load shedding commenced at 06:00 Saturday and will continue until 23:00, as per Eskom’s Friday statement.
The cycle will be repeated Sunday due to the “system being severely constrained.”
The embattled power utility said it needs to implement power cuts “in order to replenish the depleted emergency generation reserves for the coming week.”
Aging, unreliable plants
This is the first time it has implemented planned outages in December, with concerns that South Africa will have to contend with power cuts this festive season.
Oh, and then there’s COVID-19.
The Eskom statement ‘explained’ that it had had a “large number of unforeseen breakdowns from the aging, unreliable plants over the past few days.”
In addition, Eskom said it had taken two generation units at the Kendall power station offline in compliance with environmental legislation and that four units had been taken offline at the Camden power station to conserve the integrity of the ash dam facility.
The power utility warned that generation units have been lost throughout Friday due to planned and unplanned maintenance.
“This capacity shortage has been caused by the loss of multiple generation units and high load losses, in addition to generation units that are already placed in planned maintenance.”
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