By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
Stage 5 load shedding will continue until 05:00 on Saturday morning, when it will be downgraded to Stage 4, Eskom announced on Friday.
Load shedding will be further reduced to Stage 2 on Sunday until 05:00 on Monday morning.
South Africa is currently on Day 40 of a record-long load shedding streak.
The times are as follows:
Friday, 9 December
- Stage 5: Until 00h00
Saturday, 10 December
- Stage 5: 00h00 to 05h00
- Stage 4: 05h00 to 00h00
Sunday, 11 December
- Stage 4: 00h00 to 05h00
- Stage 2: 05h00 to 00h00
Monday, 12 December
- Stage 2: 00h00 to 00h00
- TBD: 05h00 to 00h00
Since Thursday morning, a generating unit each at Camden, Lethabo, Majuba and Matla power stations were taken offline for repairs and planned maintenance. In addition, the delay in returning to service a generating unit each at Arnot, Duvha and Kriel power stations has contributed to the capacity constraints, it said.
A generating unit each at Arnot, Duvha, Grootvlei, Kendal, Kriel, Matimba and Medupi power stations returned to service.
“We currently have 5,901MW on planned maintenance, while another 15,394MW of capacity is unavailable due to breakdowns,” it said.
“As previously communicated, due to the depletion of the budget to acquire diesel for the Open Cycle Gas Turbines, Eskom has been forced to strictly preserve the remaining diesel for any extreme emergency situations such as multiple, simultaneous trips of generators.
“The pumped storage dam levels also need to be replenished during this time.”
The refuelling and maintenance outage starting on Saturday morning, as well as the long-term operation project of Unit 1 of the Koeberg Nuclear Power Station, together with the chimney failure during October that has forced three generation units offline at Kusile Power Station, will further reduce available generation capacity and exacerbate the occurrence of load shedding during the next 6 – 12 months.
The country was plunged into stage 6 load shedding on Tuesday ahead of the planned outage of Koeberg Unit 1.
The outage of Unit 1 of the Koeberg Nuclear Power Station – initially planned for Thursday (8 December) – has been pushed back to Saturday (10 December) to give Eskom breathing room to try and stabilise its grid.
Load shedding has been reduced to stage 5 on Friday, but this does not indicate that Eskom is out of the woods just yet.
Public enterprises minister, Pravin Gordhan, directed the management and board of Eskom to get the country out of stage 6 load shedding with immediate effect on Thursday evening.
But the outage of Koeberg cannot be stopped, and almost 1,000MW of energy will be removed from the grid very soon and will remain offline for at least six months. According to the department of public enterprises, this will soon be followed by another outage – Unit 2 at Koeberg – for a similar period.
“The installation schedule of the specific project to replace the steam generators (at Koeberg) has moved to coincide with the outage starting in December 2022 for Unit 1, and the outage for Unit 2 starting in October 2023.
“This change to the installation of the steam generators still aligns with the overall schedule and the milestones associated with the Eskom licence application to operate Koeberg for an additional 20 years. This schedule has not changed,” it said.