Eskom chief operating officer Jan Oberholzer on Monday disclosed that a full 42 generating units at its dilapidated power stations have broken down since early the previous week – some more than once.
As a result, the struggling utility used its emergency reserves – diesel-driven open-cycle gas turbines and pump storage schemes, to try to keep the lights on.
As these reserves were depleted, load shedding intensified to Stage 4 over the weekend.
Speaking at an emergency media briefing on the state of the power system, Oberholzer said Stage 3 load shedding will continue on Monday. It will be scaled down to Stage 2 on Tuesday morning and remain at that level for the rest of the week.
He said the pump storage dam levels have been replenished, but the diesel levels are still low, as diesel has to be transported to the power stations mostly by land. Eskom will continue to use these emergency resources to limit load shedding but will continue implementing load shedding during the night to be able to replenish it.
The current load shedding forecast may change at short notice since the power system remains unreliable and unpredictable.
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