Eskom outages set to continue to ‘replenish supply’

Expect load shedding to increase this year as Eskom works on its deep level maintenance to improve power supply as the country labours under lockdown, affecting millions of people working from home to avoid being infected with Covid-19 as South Africa reached 10th place in the world in terms of infections.

While load shedding would affect those staying at home, the power cuts have had no impact on field hospitals established in the hard-hit provinces of Gauteng and Western Cape.

Gauteng health spokesperson Kwara Kekana said the province’s facilities relied on backup generators during an outage. “Load shedding is undesirable for everyone. We hope that we can have stable power supply, especially during this period of

Covid-19 and the winter season,” she said.

Back-up generators were in use while being maintained regularly and diesel levels are observed and refilled, said Western Cape health spokesperson Mark van der Heever.

While the power utility said in May that there was an 80% chance of three days of Stage 1 load shedding during the winter period,

Stage 2 load shedding was instead implemented from Friday after five generation units were taken off the grid.

According to the power utility, the electricity constraint, which is also affected by the colder weather, could continue throughout the week.

The power utility had intended on rolling out the deep level maintenance on generation units and power plants for the next 18 months, but were delayed by strict lockdown regulations which prevented the import of experts and parts, said Eskom spokesperson Sikonathi Mantshantsha.

“The borders were closed. The experts that had to do this for us could not be brought in during the lockdown.

“Due to Covid-19 regulations, we can’t have many people working in one space. At this point, we only have 1000MW taken down for this reliability maintenance,” he said.