Eskom is working hard to end load shedding as soon as possible, says De Ruyter

Eskom chief executive officer (CEO) André de Ruyter on Wednesday said the power utility was working hard to end load shedding as soon as possible.

Stage 2 load shedding

South Africans have been saddled with rolling power cuts since the start of the week, with Eskom extending stage 2 load shedding from 5am on Wednesday to Friday at 5am.

The extension of the blackouts was due to further unit breakdowns at Eskom’s power stations, poor maintenance and continued delays in returning generating units to service.

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Eskom’s management on Wednesday morning briefed the media on the utility’s shortage of generation capacity.

De Ruyter assured the nation that the parastatal was doing everything possible to ensure that load shedding did not continue into the Easter long weekend.

“We are working as hard as we can to try and restore the supply of electricity to end load shedding as soon as possible.

“We again apologise for this interruption to our normal services and I can give you the assurance that the Eskom teams are working all hours of the day and night to restore electricity supply and end load shedding as soon as we can,” De Ruyter said.

KZN floods

De Ruyter on Tuesday said the heavy rains in KwaZulu-Natal were contributing to Eskom’s power supply constraints.

He said the inclement weather conditions in the province had resulted in flooding at substations and pumped-storage facilities.

De Ruyter on Wednesday said Eskom’s total unplanned breakdowns stood at 13,662 MW, which was “uncomfortably high”.

He said the power utility had a shortfall in generation capacity of 3,518 MW.

“We had to make a decision late last night to extend load shedding from 5 am this morning to continue at least until Friday, depending of course on how the situation changes with units either returning to service from unplanned trips or potentially further breakdown, of course, that risk remains.”

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De Ruyter said they did an assessment of the grid in KZN where Eskom supplies power to municipalities. He said, on the whole, the grid was still intact except for some minor interruptions.

De Ruyter also reiterated that Eskom was not implementing load shedding in the flood-ravaged eThekwini metro.

“We’ve made an arrangement with the eThekwini Municipality and we are not implementing load shedding in eThekwini at this point in time,” he said.

Eskom’s generation group executive Phillip Dukashe said they were worried about the upcoming rain forecast for next week.

He said they would use the coming Easter long weekend to do repairs at power stations affected by flooding while things were dry for now.

“Rain has contributed to where we are, persistent rain that we have had in the country,” Dukashe said.

“We are a little worried about the forecast of rain coming up next week. We will also use this dry period to try and recover as much as possible in terms of our coal supply.”

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