Eskom has announced possible stage 6 loadshedding from 5pm on Tuesday, after the power utility lost 10 generating units overnight, Eskom CEO Andre De Ruyter announced at a media briefing on Tuesday morning.
Stage 6 power cuts would see South Africans forced to endure three bouts of rolling blackouts, which means that people would have to spend 6 hours per day without electricity.
Eskom has been implementing Stage 4 power cuts requiring up to 4,000 megawatts (MW) to be shed from the national grid from last week. With the possibility of stage 6 loadshedding, Eskom would require up to 6000 MW to be shed, and this was only implemented once before in 2019.
Eskom’s chief operating officer Jan Oberholzer said stage 6 loadshedding means to most South Africans spending six hours without electricity during the day. “We are not yet at stage 6, but the risk is very high. We will try whatever we can to avoid it,” he told a news conference.
De Ruyter said the grid was under pressure as the protest by some of the workers rages on at power plants. “This being winter, the load forecast for this evening is quite high 31.990 megawatts of demand. We have capacity available, at this stage, forecast for 27.124 MW and that of course creates the shortfall in generation capacity,” De Ruyter said.
De Ruyter said they were trying to burn through diesel to keep the lights on. “We are burning about 2 million litres of diesel per day at both Ankerlig as well as Gourikwa- those are our gas turbine open cycle sites. For the month of June to date we have already consumed 85 million litres of diesel,” De Ruyter said.