Eskom remains ‘constrained and vulnerable’ on Tuesday with low risk of load shedding

Someone please give Eskom’s power system a hug. The utility on Tuesday announced that despite the low chance of load shedding today, the grid remains “constrained and vulnerable”.

“With unplanned outages at just below 9500MW as at [sic] 7am today, the probability of load shedding is low for today, but should there be a significant shift on the system, we may need to load shed at short notice,” it said in an update.

There’s some good news though. Should tragedy befall, the utility has enough diesel and water at its pumped storage schemes to “supplement the shortage of capacity, if required”.

#POWERALERT 1
Date: 19 November 2019

No loadshedding expected today, despite a constrained and vulnerable system @SABCNewsOnline @IOL @eNCA @ewnupdates @News24 @SowetanLIVE pic.twitter.com/J0DsrS36Lu

— Eskom Hld SOC Ltd (@Eskom_SA) November 19, 2019

Eskom last implemented load shedding briefly on 7 November, when it was forced to shed capacity after hours after losing three power units.

“As a result our emergency reserves are now at critically low levels, and need to be replenished overnight in order to meet tomorrow’s forecasted demand,” it wrote in an update earlier this month.

While the utility doesn’t seem to have similar issues at present, you just can’t be too sure when it comes to Eskom’s system reliability right now.

Tuesday’s status update was the first since its new group CEO, Andre de Ruyrer, was announced.

Feature image: MDRasel Molla via Pexels