Eskom: bad to worse
BLACKOUTS: POWER UTILITY ANNOUNCES STAGE 6 LOAD SHEDDING
Unplanned breakdowns led to a loss of 12 300MW causing stage 2 load shedding, escalated to stage 4.
A2 000MW underestimation of SA’s energy needs, failing units causing generation failure, unplanned breakdowns, and a higher demand of 600MW yesterday pushed Eskom to announce stage 6 load shedding yesterday evening for the first time ever.
This meant Eskom had to shed 6 000MW thanks to a “technical problem at Medupi power station impacting additional generation supply” following President Cyril Ramaphosa’s visit.
Eskom’s unplanned breakdowns began on Thursday, with a loss of 12 300MW causing stage 2 load shedding, rapidly escalated to stage four the next day, “necessitating the use of diesel and water reserves for open cycle gas turbines and pumped storage schemes respectively,” Eskom said.
“With the incessant rain, we continue to experience coal-handling problems at a number of our power stations as a result of wet coal, which has led to generation units being unable to produce power.”
Since then it’s gone from bad to worse, with Eskom announcing its loss of generation capacity had reached 14 200MW by yesterday morning.
“In addition, with the incessant rain we are beginning to experience flooding at some power stations, which have further led to load losses and has impacted supply as the rainy weather persists,” Eskom announced.
“Even during this stage, about 80% of the demand is still being met,” Eskom stated, not realising for someone who has been load shed that 100% of that person’s demand was not being met.
“For the past two weeks the demand of the country has for some reason increased and we’re about just under 2 000MW more than we had anticipated,” Eskom chief operating officer Jan Oberholzer told SABC yesterday.
He also noted Koeberg unit one was busy with refuelling which had taken 1 000MW off the system and would only come online again at the end of December.
“The demand will also be dropping (during December) and we will make use of this opportunity to do more maintenance so that’s why I believe the risk of load shedding from the middle of December is relatively low,” Oberholzer said.
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With the incessant rain, we continue to experience coalhandling problems.
Eskom