Eskom has been enforcing South Africa’s worst rolling blackouts ever, which have left homes in the dark, hindered manufacturing, and harmed companies of all sizes.
South Africa’s state power utility Eskom announced on Sunday that it would continuously implement “Stage 6” power cuts until further notice due to breakdowns of eight generation units on Sunday afternoon.
Given the high number of breakdowns, Eskom said in a statement that additional last-minute changes to the load shedding stages are possible.
Eskom has been enforcing South Africa’s worst rolling blackouts ever, which have left homes in the dark, hindered manufacturing, and harmed companies of all sizes.
As a result, President Cyril Ramaphosa declared a “state of disaster” earlier this month due to the crippling power shortages in his nation. The “Stage 6” power cuts, the worst level of outage ever, require up to 6,000 megawatts to be cut from the national grid and cause some South Africans to go up to 10 hours a day without power.
According to Eskom CEO Andre de Ruyter, the South African power company, record “Stage 6” outages, which involve 10 hours per day without power, aren’t expected to end until late on Wednesday’s peak hours.
Eskom, which supplies the majority of the power in the most industrialized country in Africa, frequently experiences problems with its outdated coal-fired power plants.
“Rolling power cuts are referred to as load-shedding, and de Ruyter used the term at a news conference. “By Thursday, (we anticipate) we will be able to start phasing that down to load-shedding Stage 4, with load-shedding Stage 3 being reached by the weekend,” he said.
He claimed that Eskom’s purchases of diesel for its open-cycle gas turbines had the support of the National Treasury. In order to assure the banks from whom we are borrowing money to purchase the diesel that the National Treasury will support these loans, de Ruyter said, “We have obtained the support of National Treasury.”
The departing CEO, who will leave his position at the end of the following month, ruled out a complete blackout of the power system.
“In the event that there is a further loss of generation capacity, we do have backup plans in place. We do not currently anticipate that there is a risk of progressing past Stage 8,” “said de Ruyter. After having the most days with outages in 2022, Eskom has implemented power cuts every day this year.