South Africa is teetering on the brink of disaster and darkness after Eskom implemented the dreaded Stage 4 load shedding on Monday as demand exceeded its supply.
Following massive breakdowns over the weekend, mainly due to boiler tube leaks at a number of units, Eskom announced it would implement Stage 3 load shedding on Monday and Tuesday evening.
Thereafter, load shedding would be reduced to Stage 2 for the rest of the week, it said.
However at 4pm, the power provider said it was implementing Stage 4 load shedding with immediate effect due to a further loss of generating capacity.
At a press conference earlier in the day, Eskom’s CEO Andre de Ruyter and COO Jan Oberholzer warned that load shedding stages may be increased to a higher stage and for a longer period if people do not immediately try to save power.
“We are still going to be burning a lot of diesel and may be forced to implement load shedding throughout the day and not just in the evenings. We will try to avoid that but there is always a risk,” Oberholzer said.
He revealed that Eskom has already burnt about 40million litres of diesel for May.
De Ruyter added that significant diesel theft has also resulted in two units being completely out of order, which contributed to a loss of about 900 MegaWatts of capacity.
“The reserves are in reasonable shape but we have to manage it carefully. The dams are looking healthy as well. It is really the full load losses that we see across the generation fleet that is hampering us, resulting in load shedding,” De Ruyter said.