Load shedding to be reduced to Stage 5

Eskom advised on Monday that load shedding – currently at Stage 6 as of Sunday morning – will be reduced to Stage 5 at midnight.

Overnight a unit each was returned at the Camden, Kriel, Kusile and Kendal power stations. However, a unit was taken off at Duvha Power Station in Mpumalanga, “which developed a boiler tube leak.”

As of Monday afternoon Eskom had 5 411MW of generation capacity on planned maintenance outage, and 16 326MW was unavailable due to breakdowns (up from 15 630MW on Sunday).

The struggling power utility had told the media on Sunday that it would urgently start to procure additional energy from existing independent power producers – such as Sasol and Sappi – on Monday, in the hopes of having it online within a week or two.

Read: Eskom to procure emergency additional energy to ease load shedding

Eskom chief operating officer Jan Oberholzer had said that high levels of load shedding are expected for most of this week.