Due to the diesel supplied by PetroSA this week, Eskom says it will now reduce load shedding during the night from Stage 4 to Stage 3 at 16:00 to 05:00 until Monday morning.

Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan told Parliament on Wednesday that government has immediately made available 50 million litres of diesel to Eskom from state-owned oil company, PetroSA.

However, according to the state-owned power entity, daytime power cuts will remain at Stage 2 from 05:00 to 16:00 daily until further notice.

“Eskom will publish a further update as soon as there are any significant changes,” Eskom said on Thursday.

“The continued implementation of load shedding is mainly due to the high levels of breakdowns and the limited emergency generation reserves.”

Since Wednesday afternoon, Eskom said, a generating unit each at Grootvlei, Kendal and Tutuka power stations was taken offline for repairs.

In addition, four units at Camden Power Station have also been taken offline to repair a water leak on a line that supplies auxiliary cooling water, while 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.”

In the meantime, unit 1 of Koeberg Nuclear Power Station will continue to generate 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.

Eskom said it currently has 6 000MW on planned maintenance, while another 14 160MW of capacity is unavailable due to breakdowns.

“Load shedding is implemented only as a last resort in view of the shortage of generation capacity and the need to attend to breakdowns.”

Source: South African Government News Agency