Cape Town – Capetonians can tentatively look forward to fewer load shedding hours this weekend, following yet another shift of power-cut stages by Eskom.
The power utility has announced that, following the supply of diesel by PetroSA, load shedding will be reduced to Stage 3 during the night throughout the weekend.
In a statement, Eskom said it would be implementing load shedding Stage 3 during the night from 4pm until 5am until Monday morning. However, day-time load shedding would be maintained at Stage 2 between 5am and 4pm daily until further notice.
Eskom said it would publish an update if there were any significant changes.
It said the continuation of the power cuts was mainly due to the high levels of breakdowns and the limited emergency generation reserves.
The electricity service provider said since Wednesday afternoon generating units at the Grootvlei, Kendal and Tutuka power stations had been taken off-line for repairs.
Four units at the Camden power station had also been taken off-line to repair a water leak on a line that supplied auxiliary cooling water. The only generating unit that had returned to service was at the Hendrina power station, Eskom said.
“Three units at Kusile power station are off-line due to the duct (chimney structure) failure late in October and will remain off-line for a few months while repairs to the chimney system take place. Unit 1 of the Koeberg nuclear power station will continue to generate at a reduced output over the next three weeks as the fuel is ramped down ahead of the refuelling and maintenance outage scheduled to commence in December,” Eskom said.
Eskom said it currently had 6 000MW on planned maintenance, while another 14 160MW was unavailable owing to breakdowns.
“Load shedding is implemented only as a last resort given the shortage of generation capacity and the need to attend to breakdowns,” it said.
Meanwhile, City of Cape Town customers will be shielded from Stage 3 load shedding until 10pm, thereafter they will join the rest of the country on Stage 3.
According to the City of Cape Town, its customers will experience no load shedding between 5am and 4pm. They will then move to Stage 2 until 10am, whereafter they will move to Stage 3 until 5am both today and tomorrow.
Ahead of the weekend, the City said it would update its customers about further plans to shield residents and businesses from load shedding.