Eskom on Tuesday announced that it was forced to extend load-shedding until Friday morning.

In a statement, the power utility said while the country was currently in stage 2 load-shedding, which had been scheduled to last until Wednesday morning, load-shedding would again be implemented on Wednesday evening from 5pm till 5am on Thursday and it would be the same for Thursday evening.

“Stage 2 load-shedding will be extended to Wednesday and Thursday nights from 17:00 until 05:00 on Friday due to shortage of generation capacity and continued delays to the return to service of units.

“Load-shedding will then be suspended at 05:00 on Friday. The extension of load-shedding is caused by the shortage of generation capacity and continued delays in returning to service four generating units at Camden power station and two generating units at Tutuka power station. Eskom teams are working hard to return as many of these units to service as possible.”

The power utility said a single unit had tripped at Lethabo power station earlier on Tuesday but had been returned to service by the evening.

“This unit, however, will take some time to reach full production. Eskom would like to inform the public that any further deterioration in generation capacity may require further load-shedding.”

It reported that it currently had 4,804MW on planned maintenance, while another 15,300MW of capacity was unavailable due to unplanned breakdowns.

“We are managing the emergency generation reserves to limit the stage of load-shedding. The overnight load-shedding will be used to replenish the dam levels at the pump storage power stations. Eskom would like to apologise for the implementation of load-shedding and would like to reiterate that load-shedding is implemented only as a last resort in order to protect the national grid. We will communicate should there be any significant changes to the supply situation,” Eskom said.  

TimesLIVE