The Petroleum Oil and Gas Corporation of South Africa has somewhat come to the rescue of the embattled power utility Eskom and has offered loadshedding-hit consumers a slight reprieve.
Eskom spokesperson Sikonathi Mantshantsha said on Thursday that due to diesel that had been supplied by PetoSA it was able to reduce loadshedding to from Stage 4 to Stage 3.
This would come into effect on Thursday night and is expected to remain in place throughout the Black Friday weekend until 5am on Monday morning, he said.
“Daytime loadshedding will [then] be maintained at Stage 2 during 5am to 4pm daily until further notice. Eskom will publish a further update as soon as there are any significant changes,” said Mantshantsha.
He added that Eskom was battling to recover due to high levels of breakdowns at several power stations and that it also had limited emergency generation reserves.
“Since Wednesday afternoon a generating unit each at Grootvlei, Kendal and Tutuka power stations were taken offline for repairs. Four units at Camden Power Station have also been taken offline to repair a water leak on a line that supplies auxiliary cooling water.
“A generating unit at Hendrina Power Station was returned to service. Three units at Kusile Power Station are offline due to the duct (chimney structure) failure late in October and will remain offline for a few months while repairs to the chimney system take place.
“Unit 1 of Koeberg Nuclear Power Station will continue to generate at a reduced output over the next three weeks as the fuel is ramped down ahead of the refuelling and maintenance outage scheduled to commence during December 2022.”
Mantshantsha maintains loadshedding was being implemented “only as a last resort” in view of the shortage of generation capacity and the need to attend to breakdowns.
