South Africa Plunged into Load Shedding Again

Due to a “shortage of capacity”, Eskom is this afternoon implementing Stage 2 load shedding in South Africa.

In a tweet on Thursday, the power utility said: “Eskom regrets that Stage 2 load shedding will be implemented from 4pm to 11pm today due to a shortage of capacity.”

Earlier in the day Eskom had warned that the power system was constrained and vulnerable with generating plants performing at very low levels of reliability.

“With unplanned breakdowns at 12 300MW as at 10am, the probability of load shedding remains, but will only be implemented if absolutely necessary,” Eskom said Thursday morning. “There is sufficient diesel for our open cycle gas turbines and water at the pumped storage schemes to supplement the shortage of capacity, if required.”

However, they changed their minds and decided there wasn’t enough.

Load shedding is conducted rotationally as a measure of last resort to protect the power system from a total collapse or blackout. – SAnews.gov.za