Eskom has announced that load shedding will be pushed to stage 4 on Tuesday.
The power utility said that a sudden tripping of three Kendal Power Station units – totalling 1,920MW maximum generating capacity – has forced the higher stage.
Speaking to the media on Monday , Eskom chief operating officer Jan Oberholzer said that the Eskom grid is extremely vulnerable to breakdowns and that any load shedding schedules are subject to change at short notice. He said that as soon as some units are returned to operation following maintenance, they break down again soon after. He attributed the maintenance problems to a lack of appropriate skills and experience needed to address the issues.
Oberholzer said that Eskom desperately needs new capacity to be added to the grid so that it can conduct critical maintenance on its stations. There is no capacity for the utility to take off as many units as it needs to do the necessary maintenance, so there are many units that are operating with known defects, the group said.
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