Stage 8 load shedding hits SA and it’s likely to get worse

As the country continues to be subjected unrelentless load shedding, ailing parastatal Eskom quietly imposed stage 8 load shedding on unsuspecting South Africans.

Whether Eskom wants to admit it or not, the country was silently slapped with stage 8 power cuts this week and the situation may get worse as winter is coming.

Stage 8 load shedding

On Thursday during the evening peak, the power utility had energy availability of 23,771MW against power demand of 30,747MW.

Eskom then shed 7,072MW, according to its official daily energy generation update.

TimesLive reported that a single stage of load shedding requires Eskom to shed around 1,000MW of electricity, while Stage 6, which was enforced this week and Saturday, needs between 5,001MW and 6,000MW of energy to be shed.

Stage 8 demands a cut of 7,001 to 8,000MW.

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Winter

With winter around the corner, electricity demand is expected to peak as South African use heating appliance to keep warm.

According to public enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan, Eskom is unable to reliably produce 23,000MW of energy to keep the lights on during the cold season.

Koeberg Unit 2

Meanwhile, Eskom provided an update on Koeberg Unit 2 after it tripped on Saturday.

“Eskom is in the process of safely returning Koeberg Unit 2 to service. The cause of the trip was due to problems with the feedwater pumps on the secondary circuit, Eskom interim spokesperson Daphne Mokoena said.  

“The reactor has been taken critical and reactor power is being increased to enable turbine commissioning. The unit is expected to safely synchronise to the grid before morning peak tomorrow once all the required activities are completed,” she said.

Eskom failing to produce power

Meanwhile, several economists have commented on the continuing inability of Eskom to keep producing power after Statistics SA published its recent report on the amount of electricity generated and available for distribution.

The report included figures up to the end of February 2023 – and things have become much worse since then.

Electricity decline

Siphamandla Mkhwanazi, senior economist at FNB told Moneyweb, electricity production declined by 9.7% year on year in February, marking the 17th consecutive month of annual decline.

“The persistent weakness in electricity generation mirrors continued generation capacity challenges at Eskom. Unplanned power plant breakdowns continue to pose the most considerable challenge to the electricity grid, while outages linked to Eskom’s planned maintenance continue,” said Mkhwanazi.

Old Stats SA reports revealed that electricity supply has been a problem since 2008 and that electricity supply from Eskom in particular has been decreasing since 2009.

State of disaster

With Government officially withdrawing the national state of disaster on electricity on April 5, questions have been raised about whether the action made any difference as the country is still in the higher stages of load shedding.

The decision to withdraw the electricity state of disaster is likely to cost the taxpayer over R1 million just in legal fees, while there was no need for the declaration in the first place since there was existing legislation to manage the crisis.

ALSO READ: Electricity state of disaster cost more than R1 million in legal fees, achieved little else