Stage 2 load shedding continues on Friday after new Medupi struggles

Stage 2 load shedding will continue through much of Friday in South Africa, Eskom announced in an update on Friday after three boilers failed at Medupi.

The power utility on Thursday night hosted a press conference in Johannesburg, explaining that load shedding was the result of a number of ill-timed failures.

Six boiler pipes sprung leaks, two at a single power station. On top of that, the seven kilometre-long conveyor belt supplying Medupi with coal failed last weekend.

#POWERALERT 1
Date: 18 October 2019

Stage 2 loadshedding to be maintained for a greater part of today @SABCNewsOnline @News24 @SAgovnews @ewnupdates @Moneyweb @IOL @eNCA @SowetanLIVE @Fin24 @BDliveSA @BusinessLiveSA @TimesLIVE pic.twitter.com/4H5tPeCiBu

— Eskom Hld SOC Ltd (@Eskom_SA) October 18, 2019

It gets worse.

“Late last night, we lost Medupi 3, 4, and 5 due to coal and ash handling issues,” it said in a tweet on Friday.

This means the utility lost some 1500MW of generational capacity. Stage 2 will therefore have to be maintained.

Eskom CEO Jabu Mabuza at last night’s conference hoped that Stage 1 would be maintained over the weekend.

Mabuza did note that the belt should be fixed by the middle of next week, but it’s unclear what the latest Medupi drama means for the current bout of load shedding.

Cape Town: “no load shedding for City-supplied customers”

At this stage, there is no Eskom load-shedding today for City-supplied customers. Eskom Stage 1 load-shedding is however in effect which affects Eskom-supplied customers.

— City of Cape Town (@CityofCT) October 18, 2019

Looks like Cape Town may be escaping load shedding today entirely, judging by the City’s latest tweet.

However, as we’ve been accustomed to, this seems to be subject to change at any time.

Feature image: MDRasel Molla via Pexels