Durban - Eskom announced that stage 4 load shedding would continue until 5am on Thursday.
The power utility said this was due to the “sudden loss” of three Kendal Power Station generating units on Tuesday morning.
Load shedding would thereafter be reduced to state 2 until midnight on Friday.
Explaining the reason for the sudden change in the schedule, Eskom said in the early hours of Tuesday morning a conveyor belt feeding coal into Kendal Power Station, failed.
“To conserve coal, the power output of the generators was reduced, but this required fuel oil to be used to sustain the boiler combustion.
“Subsequently, the fuel oil plant supplying the units experienced a failure and shut down.
“This resulted in the trip of the three generating units.”
According to Eskom it was anticipated that the Kendal units would be returned to service by the weekend.
So far no load shedding has been announced for the weekend.
Eskom said prior to this, a generating unit each at Arnot and Medupi power stations had been taken off line for emergency repairs.
“The breakdowns have resulted in intense usage of the pumped storage schemes and the open cycle gas turbines.
“These emergency generation reserves are designed to fill the generation gap resulting from exactly this kind of emergency, and obviously cannot be used continuously.
“While some generation units are anticipated to return to service over the next 24 hours, it is necessary to increase the load shedding to conserve the emergency reserves.”
While apologising the sudden changes in the load shedding schedule, Eskom urged all South Africans to continue using electricity sparingly.
IOL