Load shedding quietly pushed to Stage 7 on Thursday

State power utility Eskom quietly implemented Stage 7 rolling power cuts last night, shedding more than 7 000MW worth of electricity from the grid.

In a demand statistic update issued late on Thursday, Eskom said total demand for the evening was at 30 747MW, while it only had 23 771MW available, forcing it to shed 7 072MW. This is despite the update noting the load shedding status as “Stage 6 and load shedding curtailment Stage 4”.

Feedback from Evening Peak
13 April 2023 pic.twitter.com/WQi4j4Qp49

— Eskom Hld SOC Ltd (@Eskom_SA) April 13, 2023

By Eskom’s own definition, if  7 000MW is cut from the grid it translates into Stage 7 load shedding.

Under Stage 5 and Stage 6, which were implemented throughout this week, 5 000MW and 6 000MW worth of power is shed, respectively.

Source: eskom.co.za

On Wednesday, the power utility intensified load shedding to Stage 6 and later said it will continue to do so indefinitely, following breakdowns at some of its generation units, including its newer power station Medupi.

Eskom said yesterday that delays in returning a unit to service at each of the Kendal, Lethabo, Medupi and Tutuka power stations are exacerbating the capacity constraints, adding that generating units at Duvha, Kendal, Medupi and Tutuka Power Stations were taken offline for repairs.

Read: Under investment, poor procurement and skills drain plague Eskom

In its response on Friday afternoon Eskom denied implementing Stage 7.

Saying that instead, it had implemented Stage 6 load shedding in conjunction with load curtailment Stage 4, which is applied to some of its industrial customers.

Under the utility’s NRS048-9 criteria, these customers are required to reduce load under system emergency conditions.

It said curtailment includes “being able to shut down parts of their industrial plant and managing the curtailment on instruction from the system operator”.

Yesterday, this was enforced between 15:00 and 22:00.

It said total power shed last night, was both from load shedding and load curtailment.

As at Thursday evening the utility’s renewable energy capacity was 1 741MW, with IPP availability totalling 1 014MW.  Total renewable energy was made up of 1 340MW of wind power, 333MW of concentrated solar power (CSP) and 68MW photovoltaic power (PV). It had also made use of 10 open-cycle gas turbines, Eskom said.

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The intensified power outages comes as the peak demand winter season approaches, and to meet generation capacity demands for the colder months, Eskom would have to keep unplanned breakdowns well below 16 000MW, Moneyweb previously reported.