Dark Monday and Tuesday nights ahead

Eskom announced on Sunday that while stage two load-shedding will be suspended at 5am on Monday, it will resume again on Monday night from 9pm and until 5am on Tuesday.

There will also be load-shedding on Tuesday night and it is going to continue on Monday and Tuesday nights for the foreseeable future.

The power utility said that while progress had been made in replenishing the emergency generation reserves, Koeberg Unit 1 had gone down on Sunday morning.

“We anticipate the need to utilise emergency reserves extensively during the next few days to avoid load-shedding. To achieve this, stage 2 load-shedding will be required on Monday and Tuesday nights in order to replenish the emergency reserves for the following day,” Eskom said in a statement on Sunday afternoon.

“Koeberg Unit 1 tripped on Sunday morning as a result of a fault on a feedwater pump, which is on the secondary plant. The plant was shut down in accordance with standard plant operating procedures and all parameters are stable. There are no nuclear safety concerns on the reactor side of the plant, which is ready to be restarted once the feedwater pump fault has been resolved.”

An investigation into the faulty feedwater pump was under way and only when concluded will Eskom be able to confirm when the unit will be repaired and ready to return to service — “expected to be during next week”.

Eskom said service units at the Tutuka and Hendrina power stations as well as two Kusile units have also returned to service in the past 24 hours.

“Unfortunately, we have taken off a unit each at Hendrina and Kriel power stations, in addition to the Koeberg unit. Total breakdowns now amount to 15,813MW while planned maintenance is 4 967MW of capacity.”

“Eskom would like to apologise for the inconvenience caused by the implementation of load-shedding, and asks that people reduce their usage in order to help us through the constraints,” it said.