South Africa is again on the brink of load shedding after Eskom was forced to take several power generating units off the grid on Thursday.
“Eskom may be forced to implement load shedding at short notice should further generating capacity losses occur,” the state-owned utility said late on Thursday. It appealed to the public to reduce consumption to avoid rolling blackouts during the evening peak.
A unit each at the Tutuka, Medupi and Majuba power stations tripped, while a unit at Lethabo has been taken offline to repair a boiler tube leak, Eskom said.
“While the system is currently performing relatively well, with no load shedding being implemented, a further loss of generation capacity would force Eskom to implement load shedding at short notice to protect the integrity of the system, particularly between 6pm and 9pm this evening,” it said.
Breakdowns currently total 13.6GWW, while planned maintenance is at 4.1GW of capacity. “Eskom is working to return as many of these units as possible, starting tonight.
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