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Are even darker days on the cards for Newcastillians and their fellow South Africans? This follows a media briefing by Eskom on Wednesday morning, 9 March 2022, where Eskom Group Chief Operating Officer, Jan Oberholzer provided an update on the current system challenges faced.
Oberholzer noted that at a logistics level, Eskom is burning millions of litres of diesel a day, simply to support the system.
He elaborates, stating that between Ankerlig and Gourikwa, Eskom is using a staggering nine million litres of diesel a day to support the system.
“But if you take the nine million litres and you do your own calculations, you will see that we are actually using a lot of finances currently, to just top up from an emergency point of view the capacity of the system. Which obviously is not sustainable.”
Adding to this, he highlighted that if the power utility runs out of diesel, it will not be able to supply the current electrical demand and necessitate a further three stages of loadshedding. Additionally, if Eskom’s dam levels are also depleted, it will require an additional three stages of loadshedding.
“The combined effect would be an additional six stages of loadshedding,” he said, which is why it was so important for Eskom to resolve the issues at hand.
Currently, Eskom has up until Stage 8 for loadshedding. As we are currently on Stage 4, six additional levels would take us to Stage 10, a totally unfamiliar scenario for the country.
According to Oberholzer, at present, South Africa is relying on 16 power stations that contribute to the running of the country. However, all of these are at risk:
Oberholzer notes:
- Three units are at very high risk.
- 10 Units are at medium risk.
- Three units are at low risk.
When looking at the past three days, on Monday, 7 March 2022, the power utility notified that it was forced to implement Stage 2 loadshedding due to multiple power stations tripping. This includes Matla, Kendal, Matimba, Kusile and Grootvlei power stations.
On top of this, a unit each at Arnot and Hendrina power stations were forced to shut down. This is in addition to other units that had tripped during the weekend all of which forced Eskom to rely heavily on emergency generation reserves to keep the lights on, the power utility explained.
Additionally, Medupi Unit 3 also broke down on the same day, adding to the multiple generating unit failures, severely reducing available generating capacity.
Following this, the power utility implemented Stage 4 Loadshedding on Wednesday morning, 9 March 2022, just prior to the media briefing, with Eskom explaining that this decision stemmed from further unplanned breakdowns at power stations.
The electricity supplier also noted that due to extremely high diesel usage, the emergency reserves were being depleted faster than they could be replenished.
With Eskom now facing challenges to keep South Africa’s power supply on, what are your thoughts?
Share your views in the comment section below.
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11 Responses
SO I TAKE IT THAT OUR UTILITY BILL WILL NOW BE REDUCED
wtf is stage 10! when they come to your house and blow out your candles.. and take the batteries out your torch!
This is all because of greed and no maintenance. The powers that be cannot run this country, we never had this problem prior to 1994.
Can you imagine what this will do to the economy
Ons hele land is in een groot gemors
At stage 4 electricity is not available to us fr roughly 20 to 30%of the month yet our electricity bills are the same and higher..why do pay fr electricity availability if it’s not continuously available to us also..we jus being raped by the govt.
THERE MUST BE ANOTHE ENTITY WHO CAN RUN ESCOM BETTER!!! UNITS OF A BRAND NEW MEDUPI POWER STATION BREAKING DOWN????????? HOW THE HELL IS THIS SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN???????? WE ARE ON OUR WAY TO BECOMING FOURTH WORLD COUNTRY!!! MIND YOU, WE MUST ACCEPT THE FACT THAT WE ARE PART OF AFRICA AND CAN EXPECT NOTHING MORE!!
I totally agree our bills should be reduced and who will compensate us for loss of appliances and frozen foods in our fridges .
Basically we are either f&cked or being f&cked…take your pick. Pay up and enjoy the ride.
Moderate away, will it make any difference to the truth?
Our new mine will save Eskom