Cape Town – While a number of Capetonians were already dealing with power outages due to the City of Cape Town’s scheduled electricity maintenance, this has taken a back seat after Eskom implemented load shedding on Wednesday.
The announcement comes after Eskom CEO André de Ruyter was holding a briefing on system constraints on Wednesday morning, and towards the end he announced that load shedding would be implemented.
He announced that Stage 2 load shedding will be implemented from 2pm today until 5am on Saturday.
“Unfortunately, as we have been speaking there have been additional developments, which shows that the system is indeed very finely balanced and that it is a very dynamic situation that we have been dealing with.
“Due to the loss of Medupi, Kendal and Duvha units, we now have insufficient generation capacity at our disposal and as such we have no alternative but to implement Stage 2 load shedding from 2pm this afternoon until 5am on Saturday morning, November 20,” De Ruyter said.
“Again, our apologies for that but we have a challenge with our remaining emergency reserves...”
Later Eskom released a detailed statement on the matter, stating that load shedding was implemented to preserve the remaining emergency reserves at the Open Cycle Gas Turbine (OCGT) and pump storage power stations in order to prevent higher stages of load shedding.
“Of the five units that failed on Tuesday, a unit at Majuba, Kriel and Matimba power stations have returned to service while the remaining two units are undergoing boiler tube leak repairs.
“Total breakdowns currently amount to 15 485MW while planned maintenance is 4 100MW of capacity.
“We remind customers that load shedding is implemented as a last resort to maintain the stability of the power system regardless of the stage of load shedding,” Eskom said.
The City of Cape Town, then in turn announced how its customers would be affected by the load shedding this week.
Customers will be on Stage 1 from 2pm until 10pm this evening, and then Stage 2 would be implemented from 2pm until 5am on Thursday morning.
Stage 1 would run from 6am on Thursday morning until 10pm on Thursday, and then Stage 2 would kick in thereafter.
The same schedule of power cuts would apply for Friday into Saturday morning when load shedding is expected to be suspended.
Load-shedding update
— City of Cape Town (@CityofCT) November 17, 2021
Eskom customers will be on Stage 2.
City customers:
17/11/2021
Stage 1: 14:00 – 22:00
Stage 2: 22:00 – 05:00
18/11/2021
Stage 1: 06:00 – 22:00
Stage 2: 22:00 – 05:00
19/11/2021
Stage 1: 06:00 – 22:00
Stage 2: 22:00 – 05:00, 20/11/2021#CTInfo pic.twitter.com/eh5W3axRi0
Many Capetonians were already experiencing power outages this week, due to the City of Cape Town carrying out required electricity maintenance.
The City said starting from Monday, November 5 and for the rest of the week until November 21, it would have to carry out necessary maintenance on its electrical infrastructure across various areas in the metro.
“This will necessitate supply interruptions for the safety of all concerned,” it said.
The City has listed all the areas that will be affected this week, but added a caveat that while the information was correct at the time of publication, the maintenance was subject to change due to weather and other unforeseen conditions.
The City of Cape Town also recently denied accusations by Eskom that it is one of the municipalities across the country that don’t comply with Eskom's load shedding instructions.
In a statement, the City said protection of its customers has no impact on the national Eskom grid.