Remember that possible load shedding Eskom was teasing us with earlier today? Well, it’s been confirmed, and South Africa’s state-owned power utility just announced that it’s implementing Stage 2 load shedding from 19:00 on 2 November to 5:00 on 3 November 2021.
Hello, my old friend load shedding
“This afternoon a generation unit at Kusile power station tripped, adding to the constraints. A unit each at Matimba and Arnot power stations failed to return to service as previously anticipated,” the statement from 15:00 reads.
“Total breakdowns currently amount to 17,933MW,” — that’s 2,000MW more generation capacity lost than Eskom reported this morning. It’s also doing planned maintenance that amounts to a total of 3,451MW of its capacity. We reckon more of that, earlier, would’ve helped circumvent some of the issues we’re facing now — but here we are.
It’s clear that the utility is failing South Africans more each year. In 2019, the utility shed a total of 533 hours. In 2020, it shed a total of 846 hours — almost 300 more than the previous year
As always, the utility urges the public to use less electricity, because it can’t manage. If that doesn’t work, however, it might be time to research implementing solar power or other off-grid alternatives.