By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
State owned power utility Eskom will implement Stage 6 until further notice from 16:00 on Saturday after Unit 2 at Koeberg tripped in the early hours of the morning.
The power utility could not confirm the cause of the trip as diagnostics are still ongoing. The Koeberg Nuclear Power Station is now currently completely offline, as unit 1 is still undergoing life-extension maintenance.
A single unit at Koeberg is almost equivalent to one full stage of load shedding (970MW), which means the grid is now under even more severe pressure.
Eskom spokesperson Daphne Mokwena says the unit was still out by early Saturday afternoon as the team is “still busy with the diagnosis”.
Unit 1 at Koeberg Power Station is currently on a long-term outage for maintenance and refuelling as well as the replacement of the steam generators, and is expected to return to service on 6 August 2023. Unit 2 will be going offline for similar maintenance soon afterwards.
Mokwena subsequently announced that Stage 6 load shedding would be implemented until further notice from 16:00 on Saturday.
Persistent stage 6 load shedding has set alarm bells ringing for South Africa’s approaching winter months when demand is expected to increase.
In a statement, the utility said, “Eskom regrets the escalation of load shedding to Stage 6 but would like to assure all South Africans that our personnel at the various power stations are working around the clock to bring units back online and at higher efficiencies as soon as possible.”
“The power system however, remains under severe pressure and there is a high possibility that load shedding will continue to be implemented at varying stages.”
“The cold front expected this weekend is anticipated to further increase the demand for electricity, adding to the capacity constraints, especially at evening peak hours from 5pm until 9pm. This can be alleviated if all consumers switch of heating and high consumption appliances during the peak hours.
For access to other load shedding schedules, Eskom has made them available on loadshedding.eskom.co.za.
Smartphone users can also download the app EskomSePush to receive push notifications when load shedding is implemented, as well as the times the area you are in will be off.