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AfrElec PERFORMANCE AfrElec
SA to face up to 14 hours a
day with no electricity
SOUTH AFRICA A South African energy expert has called for South Africa has a generating capacity of
the struggling national power utility Eskom about 44,000MW. According to Mashele, the
to review its outage schedule as the possibility country uses about 29,000MW a day on aver-
grows of even deeper power cuts (load shed- age. “To have more than 19,000MW unavailable
ding), BusinessLIVE reports. due to breakdowns is shocking. We’ve never seen
Lungile Mashele, an independent energy numbers like that,” says the analyst.
analyst, warned of an increasing risk of stage 8 “In 2008 when they came up with stages 1 to
load shedding as Eskom scrambles to stabilise 8, I don’t think they ever thought we were going
its coal-fired system and delay the scheduled to get there,” Mashele was quoted as saying.
maintenance of a unit at its Koeberg nuclear “They need to revise that and be realistic with
plant. According to Mashele, Stage 8 will mean what is happening on the system and tell us what
no electricity for 12-14 hours a day. stage 12 or 15 will look like.”
The state-owned enterprise implemented Eskom said on Wednesday that Stage 6 load
Stage 6 power cuts on Wednesday (Decem- shedding will continue until 5am on Friday
ber 7) after further breakdowns took the and then be reduced to Stage 5, BusinessLIVE
total amount of unavailable power to about reports.
24,000MW, with unplanned outages accounting “We have 4,984MW on planned mainte-
for just over 19,000MW. nance while 19,052MW is unavailable due to
Koeberg nuclear plant is currently the most breakdowns. Due to the depletion of the budget
reliable energy producer in Eskom’s fleet. Its Unit to acquire diesel for the open-cycle gas turbines
1 was scheduled to go offline from Wednesday Eskom has been forced to preserve the remain-
night for six months of maintenance, including ing diesel for extreme emergency situations such
the refuelling and replacement of its steam gen- as multiple, simultaneous trips of generators,” it
erators, writes BusinessLIVE. said.
With a generating capacity of about 950MW, Eskom has previously warned that load shed-
the shutdown would have been equivalent to ding will increase over the next six to 12 months
a further stage of power cuts. According to due to planned maintenance at some power
Eskom’s latest update, Koeberg will now only be stations.
taken offline on Friday (December 9) afternoon.
Week 49 07•December•2022 www. NEWSBASE .com P7
