Durban - South Africans woke up to Stage 2 load shedding on Friday morning. This after Eskom implemented Stage 4 load shedding earlier this week, then Stage 3 from 9pm on Thursday.
SA is expected to remain on Stage 2 until Saturday, 5am.
"A unit each at the Koeberg, Medupi, Kriel, Duvha, Kusile and Tutuka power stations returned to service, helping to ease the current capacity constraints. Unfortunately, during this time, a unit each at Majuba and Arnot power stations tripped while a single unit at Matla was forced to shut down," Eskom said.
It said while this allowed space to reduce the utilisation of emergency generation reserves, it is however, still insufficient to end the current load shedding. The next two days will be used to further improve the emergency reserves in preparation for the week ahead.
Total breakdowns currently amount to 14 161MW while planned maintenance is 5 449MW of capacity.
“We remind customers and the public that load shedding is implemented as a last resort to maintain the stability of the power system regardless of the stage of load shedding as the power system remains to be effectively controlled,” Eskom said.
Eskom would like to assure the public that there is very low probability of a system collapse, and therefore, no cause for alarm.
“We would like again to apologise for the inconvenience caused to the people of South Africa, particularly the education fraternity who is negatively affected by the load shedding while sitting for the matriculation exams,” Eskom said.
IOL