South Africans will have to brace themselves for at least two extra days of Stage 4 load shedding following its extension by Eskom.

The electricity supplier announced that Stage 4 load shedding would now be extended to Thursday and Friday with a possibility of lower stages on Saturday.

The power utility had initially announced that Stage 4 would be lowered to Stage 2 early on Thursday morning. However, further challenges at power stations have now delayed that process.

“Eskom teams are working around the clock to units to service but in view of the shortage of generation capacity and the need to carry out unplanned maintenance to return units to service, we unfortunately have to implement load shedding as a last resort.

“The extension of stage four load shedding is required due to further breakdowns of a generation unit each at Kendal and Majuba this morning due to boiler tube leaks. The breakdowns during the past few days of three generation units each at Kendal and Tutuka power stations as well as the delayed return to service of a unit at Camden power station continue to contribute to the capacity constraints,” Eskom said.

Some 5209 MW of capacity is out due to planned maintenance to address known risks at power stations while unplanned breakdowns had taken some 16 669MW of energy off the grid as of Wednesday afternoon.

“While some generation units are expected to return to service, it is necessary to extend the load shedding to replenish the emergency generation reserves which have been depleted by extensive utilisation over the past week,” Eskom said.

Source: South African Government News Agency