According to Eskom chief executive Andre de Ruyter, while some generating units have or are expected to return to service, the country is to remain at load shedding Stage 2. The power utility is battling partial load losses of at least 12,902MW, down from some 14,994MW earlier this week.
“Overnight we regained some units. Regrettably, we also lost some units. Matla Power Station Unit 5 returned to service. Kusile Power Station is currently running at 333MW…[and] Kendal Power Station Unit 5 returned to service," said De Ruyter, speaking during a media briefing on Thursday morning.
“There are plans in place to return more units to service. So at this point in time our recovery is as anticipated. However, we have to point out that there is still the possibility that we may lose further units and therefore at this point in time...we will maintain Stage 2 load shedding until 5am Monday morning,” he said.
According to De Ruyter, Camden Power Station’s Unit 3 and Medupi Power Station’s Unit 6 are on planned outages. He also reported trips at Thuthuka Power Station Unit 4 and a forced shutdown of Arnot Power Station’s Unit 2.
Emergency generating reserves being replenished
De Ruyter said in terms of the emergency generating reserves which were depleted since the weekend, the power utility is replenishing its dams and diesel stocks.
“We will manage our dam levels over the weekend and replenish our upper dams so that will give us...the reserve capacity that we require from a pump storage perspective. We have managed to improve the stockholding of our diesel at our open cycle gas turbine plants at Ankerlig Power Station as well as at Gourikwa Power Station. Gourikwa is sitting currently at 84% and Ankerlig at 59%.
“[On Wednesday] we were at 30% at Ankerlig [which] is a very important [power station] when it comes to giving us that reserve buffer capacity in the event that we have a major system upset,” De Ruyter said.
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