Eskom increase length of daily power cut

• 2 years ago (2022-05-16)
• David Flin

Africa 322 Operations 4 Transmission 192

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South Africa’s state power utility Eskom has announced that it has increased the hours of daily power cut temporarily, because it lost more generation capacity. Eskom said in a statement: “On Monday and Tuesday evening, load shedding will be implemented at Stage 3. Thereafter, load shedding will be reduced to Stage 2 for the rest of the week.”

One unit at three different power stations broke down on the evening of 14 May, Eskom said, making a third of its capacity non-operational due to unplanned outages. It has a nominal power generation capacity of just over 45 GW.

Stage 3 involves Eskom implementing a seven and a half hour rolling outage across the country. Stage 2 is a five-hour rolling backout.

Eskom said that South Africa needed between 4000 and 6000 MW of additional capacity and unless that is met, rolling blackouts will be a regular occurrence.