“Medupi Unit 3 broke down, necessitating load shedding to be [implemented]... This adds to the multiple generating unit failures that occurred over the past 24 hours and has severely reduced available generating capacity.
“Since [Monday] morning, a unit each at Matla, Kendal, Matimba, Kusile and Grootvlei power stations tripped, while a unit each at Arnot and Hendrina power stations were forced to shut down. This, in addition to other units that had tripped during the weekend, reduced available generation capacity, forcing Eskom to rely heavily on emergency generation reserves to keep the lights on,” the power utility said.
Eskom explained that the current bout of load shedding will allow the power utility to replenish emergency generation reserves which have been used “significantly since the past weekend”.
Loading shedding will be implemented until 5am on Saturday, 12 March.
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