SA must brace for the return of stage 5 load-shedding this week, at least until Wednesday, as Eskom buckles under severe power supply pressure due to high levels of breakdown and depletion of its emergency reserves.
Eskom said on Sunday that various stages of load-shedding were planned until Wednesday with further updates to follow later during the week. From Monday to Wednesday stage 5 load-shedding will be implemented at night.
“Changes in the stages of load-shedding will be more erratic due to the absence of the buffer that is normally provided by the diesel generation capacity between generating unit breakdowns,” said Eskom.
On Sunday afternoon, unplanned breakdowns amounted to roughly 14,500MW of capacity. This corresponded to the “middle-of-the-road” outlook presented last week in Eskom’s state of the system update.
This report provides power users with insight into how much load-shedding they could expect in coming months, and predicts that up to 155 days of stage 3 load-shedding may have to be implemented over the six months from December to May.
The outlook is based on assumptions of 13,000MW, 14,500MW and 16,000MW of unplanned generation outages.
Under the base-case scenario (13,000MW unavailability), almost no load-shedding will be required to manage power supply and demand.
However, when outages rise to 14,500MW, the utility will need to implement on average 16 days of stage 2 load-shedding a month over the next six months.
At 16,000MW unplanned unavailability the load-shedding outlook increases to about 26 days of stage 3 load-shedding a month.
Eskom said on Sunday that various stages of load-shedding were planned until Wednesday with updates to follow during the week. From Monday to Wednesday stage 5 load-shedding will be implemented during the evenings.
“Changes in the stages of load-shedding will be more erratic due to the absence of the buffer that is normally provided by the diesel generation capacity between generating unit breakdowns,” Eskom said.
The utility said last week that with five months left of its current financial year it has already overspent on its annual diesel budget of about R11bn. This means that until the new financial year starts in April it will struggle to afford to run its diesel-powered emergency generation fleet.
Outages at Kusile and Medupi, the largest and newest power stations in Eskom’s fleet, will continue to affect system performance for months so come.
Three units at Kusile, with combined generation capacity of 2,200MW, were shut down recently after unit 1 had a chimney collapse. Eskom cannot now say when these units will be returned to service, but it will take at least a few months.
Medupi Unit 4 (800MW), damaged by an explosion in 2021, stays out of service until September 2024.
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