Eskom Scales Down To Stage 2 Loadshedding After Generation Units Recover

Power cuts were eased to Stage 2 at 5am today after Eskom managed to restore several generating units that had unexpectedly gone offline over the weekend, Cape town Etc reports.

The crisis began on Saturday when an issue at Majuba power station in Mpumalanga led to a unit failure, which in turn affected operations at Medupi in Limpopo, removing 800MW from the grid.

By early Sunday, the situation had worsened, with four additional units at Camden power station shutting down due to a hydraulic valve failure, forcing an escalation to Stage 6.

By Monday, Eskom had managed to recover most of the lost capacity, bringing loadshedding down to Stage 4 . Late that evening, the power utility announced further improvements, saying that eight of the ten affected units had been restored, with an additional 1 146MW expected to be available overnight.

Eskom noted that emergency reserves were being replenished but had not yet reached optimal levels. A further update on the power situation is expected later on Tuesday.