By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
State owned power utility Eskom has suspended load shedding at 10am on Sunday after recovering more than 3GW of generating capacity and restoring its emergency reserves.
The rolling blackouts, implemented at 2pm on Friday, 7 March, and initially set to be lifted at 5am on Monday, come after 2,700MW of generation capacity had been lost last week – the third collapse in 30 days.
On Sunday morning, Eskom reported that coal operations at Kusile were at optimal levels, with all units that were offline on Friday back in service, and that the recovery of Koeberg Unit 2 was well under way.
“Eskom reassures the public that Koeberg Unit 2 remains safe,” Eskom spokesperson Daphne Mokwena said just before 10am on Sunday. “Planned maintenance outages aimed at preparing for winter and meeting regulatory and environmental licensing requirements continue.”
Eskom said its Summer Outlook, published on 26 August 2024, remains unchanged. This anticipated no load shedding from 1 September 2024 to 31 March 2025, provided unplanned outages remained at or below 13,000MW.
“We maintain our position that load shedding is largely behind us due to structural improvements in the generation fleet,” Mokwena said.
Her comments came after Energy and Electricity minister Dr Kgosientsho Ramokgopa said on Saturday that while he had utter trust in the Eskom CEO and board, he’d be going to “ground zero” – visiting the Kendal, Matimba, Lethabo, Camden, Kusile and Koeberg plants and and speaking to managers and employees – to find out what’s going on, as well as to boost morale.
“So, clearly there’s been areas of failure, and those areas require that we have an honest conversation,” he said.
Mokwena added that “while baseload capacity remains constrained, our generation recovery plan is addressing this challenge. The dedicated efforts of our highly skilled staff remain unwavering.”