BY MY BROADBAND STAFF
South Africa is on the brink of getting hit with its highest level of load-shedding yet — stage 7 — and Eskom CEO André De Ruyter should shoulder the blame.
That is according to energy expert Ted Blom, who recently spoke to eNCA following the implementation of stage 6 load-shedding at noon on Wednesday, 7 December 2022.
Eskom said the implementation of stage 6 was due to a high number of breakdowns since midnight and the need to preserve its remaining emergency generation reserves.
“We are on the cusp of record-breaking stage 7 load-shedding,” Blom said.
“If they don’t resolve stage 6 by tomorrow [Thursday, 8 December 2022], we will move to stage 7 because we are about to lose another thousand megawatts when they take unit 1 of Koeberg down for refurbishment of six months.”
The refurbishment Blom referred to is the scheduled shutdown of Koeberg nuclear power station’s Unit 1, which has a maximum nameplate capacity of 970MW and can deliver roughly 930MW of power to the grid.
One stage of load-shedding sheds around 1,000MW of demand from the grid.
With roughly another 1,000MW unavailable and the same level of breakdowns as of Wednesday, 7 September 2022, stage 7 would be a logical outcome.
