Cape Town - The City of Cape Town has announced that its customers will be on Stage 1 load shedding until 10pm after Eskom implemented Stage 2 load shedding on Wednesday.
The power utility said that as power constraints had persisted it had “regretfully” to implement Stage 2 load shedding from 4pm on Tuesday until 5am on Wednesday.
“This afternoon a generation unit at Kusile power station tripped, adding to the constraints. A unit each at Matimba and Arnot power stations failed to return to service as previously anticipated.
“These constraints are expected to persist for the rest of the week, which may require the load shedding to be extended. We are currently utilising emergency generation reserves extensively to supplement supply,” it said.
Eskom explained that total breakdowns currently amount to 17 933MW while planned maintenance is 3 451 MW of capacity.
“Eskom would like to remind customers and the public that load shedding is implemented as a last resort to maintain the stability of the power system.
“We would like again to apologise for the inconvenience caused to the people of South Africa by the load shedding.
“Eskom requests the public to continue using electricity sparingly, and will communicate promptly should there be any significant changes to the power system.”
After the announcement the City of Cape Town said that its customers could expect to experience Stage 1 load shedding from 6pm until 10pm, and then move to Stage 2 load shedding from 10pm until 5am on Wednesday.
Last week the City of Cape Town lashed out at the power supplier after it escalated load shedding to Stage 4. The City said then that the current amount of load shedding was “simply unsustainable”.
“This amount of load shedding is simply unsustainable to our residents and businesses and the South African economy as a whole. The lack of leadership from national government on the urgent changes required in the energy regime is a blow to all South Africans.
“As a well-run city, investment and maintenance in infrastructure is critical to ensure that assets such as the Steenbras scheme and gas turbines can be used to assist where possible,” the City said.
It added that since September 2020, the municipality had protected its customers through the use of the Steenbras Hydro Pumped Storage Scheme and, to a lesser extent, its gas turbines for a total of 457 hours or an equivalent of about 19 full days.
The Steenbras Hydro Pumped Storage Scheme enables the City to shield its customers from at least one stage of load shedding.
Following Eskom’s announcement that load-shedding (Eskom Stage 2) will resume from 16:00 today until 05:00 tomorrow morning, 3 November, here’s what City customers can expect:
— City of Cape Town (@CityofCT) November 2, 2021
2 November
Stage 1 from 18:00 until 22:00
Stage 2 from 22:00 until 05:00, 3 November #CTInfo pic.twitter.com/D7cyFwxAc6