SA facing jab setback

There are many questions about the efficacy of the AstraZeneca vaccine currently being administered in South Africa, with experts unsure about its effectiveness against the new variant of Covid-19.

Enjoy the electricity while it lasts following Eskom’s lifting of rolling blackouts yesterday, with the utility only able to generate under 12 000MW with 4 664MW on planned maintenance, while another 13 539MW of capacity was unavailable due to breakdowns.

“All the power stations were built to generate electricity. Some are broken and that is the 13 539MW of capacity the statement speaks of,” Eskom spokesperson Sikonathi Mantshantsha said.

“Medupi has six units totalling 4 800MW. Five were taken offline last week due to the inability to get coal into the units as a result of the heavy rain in the Lephalale.

“Four returned to service [on] Friday evening. The other two units are in other stations.

“Eskom expects another four generation units to return to service this week, which will help further ease the supply constraints,” he said.

Yesterday, Eskom gave itself a pat on the back by announcing the suspension of the scheduled weekend load shedding that was supposed to last until 11pm last night.

The power utility said another two units were returned to service in the same period, while the generation reserves had sufficiently recovered.

Ted Blom, a mining and energy advisor, said he predicted that South Africans would be in the dark last week and it was unacceptable that the country had to be load shed due to the power utility operating on low diesel.

“It’s unacceptable that every time the petrol tank is empty, we are load shed.

“Eskom ran out of diesel on Tuesday and Wednesday last week and used up all the open cycle gas generators.

“When I forecast that we would experience load shedding, they said I was misleading people,” said Blom.”