Johnathan Paoli
Eskom has announced that the first load-shedding of 2024 will be implemented from Tuesday, 2 January, and said the implementation was as a result of recent unplanned loss of three generating units.
“With the current intensified maintenance aimed at improving the fleet performance, we had a setback of three generating units (2 148MW) not coming back online as anticipated,” the power utility said in a statement on Monday.
Eskom said that unplanned outages were currently at 16 231MW of generating capacity, while the capacity out of services for planned maintenance was 8 451MW, for a total of 24,682MW of capacity unavailable at the time of its statement.
The utility said Eskom teams were working tirelessly to ensure that 4 921MW of generating capacity was returned to service before the end of the week.
The utility said that its load forecast for the evening peak demand for Tuesday was 23 011MW.
Eskom said that this pattern of Stage 2 load shedding in the morning and Stage 3 load shedding in the evening would be repeated daily until further notice.
Earlier this month, Eskom reported that for the six-month period ending September 30, plant availability continued to deteriorate, with the energy availability factor (EAF) declining to 55.3% and resulting in more frequent load shedding at higher stages on average than in the previous year.
The power utility, however, maintained that repair works to the permanent stack for units 1, 2, and 3 were progressing well, with intensified efforts being made to return Medupi Unit 4 to service by the end of July this year.
Eskom said that this, together with the successful completion of Kusile Unit 5 and the return of the three Kusile units would further improve the energy availability and give impetus to the power utility’s Generation Recovery Plan.
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