Cape Town – Eskom has warned that there is a high risk of load shedding on Thursday evening.
The power utility said if it does switch off power, it's likely to occur after 9pm. It said its power system was under “stress” on Thursday morning, which forced it to use diesel generators to meet demand.
“The units that were expected to come back from maintenance were delayed, which led to diesel generators being used overnight," Eskom said in a statement.
“While we have adequate emergency reserves to supplement capacity during the day, we may need to implement load shedding this evening to augment diesel and water at our open cycle gas turbines and pumped storage schemes.”
Eskom said unplanned outages were at 13 063MW at 6am on Thursday, which was slightly up from 12 620MW on Wednesday.
The power utility has urged customers to help reduce demand.
%%%twitter https://twitter.com/hashtag/Loadshedding?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#LoadsheddingEskom says if it does go ahead and switch off power it will likely be after 9pm.
— Mia Lindeque (@MiaLindeque)