South Africans are waking up to the bad news that Eskom will be implementing Stage 4 load shedding.
In a statement released on early Wednesday on X (formerly Twitter), the power utility said it was due to “insufficient emergency reserves”.
“Due to insufficient emergency reserves and generation capacity as a result of four units not returning to service as planned, Stage 4 load shedding was implemented this morning at 2.31am until further notice,” said Eskom, adding that it will monitor the system and communicate should any significant changes occur.
The stage 4 implementation comes on the heels of Eskom implementing Stage 2 load shedding for seven hours on Tuesday due to the “imminent forced shutdown of two generating units”.
Stage 3 load shedding was then implemented from 4pm until 5am on Wednesday.
The recent news of load shedding might come as a surprise as Eskom has announced that its stream generators on Koeberg’s Unit 1 have been replaced successfully. However, the unit is expected to be synchronised to the grid only by the end of the month.
Once the Unit 1 commissioning is complete, the three steam generators on Unit 2 are scheduled for replacement, leaving doubts about the impact in solving current load shedding challenges.
“The replacement of the steam generators was identified in the licence application for long term operation of Koeberg that was submitted to the National Nuclear Regulator (NNR), as being a prerequisite for the station to operate safely beyond its original licensed operating period of 40 years (beyond 2024),” Eskom said.
IOL