Eskom has confirmed that Stage 2 load-shedding will be implemented from 14:00 on Wednesday November 17, until 5:00 on Saturday November 20.

CEO Andre de Ruyter announced the latest round of load-shedding at the tail-end of a briefing initially called to warn of possible rotational power cuts, owing to a surge in unplanned outages to 14 444 MW, while planned maintenance was being performed on units with a combined capacity of 4 100 MW.

During the meeting, several other outages emerged, raising unplanned breakdowns 15 485 MW, and causing the system operator to conclude that there was insufficient generation capacity to proceed in the absence of Stage 2 (2 000 MW) of load-shedding.

"Regretfully, due to the ongoing insufficient generation capacity and the loss of a unit each at Medupi, Duvha and Kendal power stations this morning, Stage 2 load-shedding will be implemented from 14:00 today until 05:00 on Saturday 20 November.

"This is to preserve the remaining emergency reserves at the open-cycle gas turbine and pump storage power stations in order to prevent higher stages of load-shedding," Eskom said in a subsequent statement

Of the five units that failed on November 16, a unit each at Majuba, Kriel and Matimba power stations had been returned to service while the remaining two units were undergoing boiler-tube leak repairs.

De Ruyter, who announced load-shedding ahead of an appearance before the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Pubic Enterprises, said the decision to transition from warning of possible cuts to an announcement of yet more load-shedding indicated how finely balanced the system was.

He said it would remain so until between 4 000 MW and 6 000 MW of new capacity was added to the grid, which would allow Eskom the time and space it required to carry out proper maintenance on its aged coal fleet.

Responding to a question on Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana's assertion that De Ruyter was the first CEO to be given the leeway to conduct maintenance, De Ruyter said: "The statement that's being made that I'm being afforded space for maintenance that previously wasn't afforded to some of my predecessors is actually quite an interesting one. It suggests that there was a deliberate decision, which may or may not be correct, to defer maintenance under the leadership of my predecessors and, of course, that just exacerbates the current challenges that we are facing."

De Ruyter stressed, however, that Eskom's relationship with the National Treasury was "constructive", even though there had been delays in allowing the utility scope to deviate from the Public Finance Management Act (PFMA) in order to improve the quality of its procurement.

Eskom has indicated the application of the PFMA had led it to contract with suppliers that delivered the cheapest quote, but not the best maintenance services.

"For example, [we are not allowed] to use an Eskom wholly owned subsidiary called ERI Rotek without testing the market.

"This slows us down very significantly and we have approached the National Treasury for a request for an exemption in this regard; that request was submitted on the 24th of June of this year and, as I speak here, no response to that has been received.

"That does have an impact on our ability to deploy resources to site, to carry out much-needed maintenance.

"That is our major challenge, which is on the administration of the PFMA, while emphasising that we respect the need to have good governance applicable to dealing with public funds, but we also need to have expeditious resolution to requests that we put to the National Treasury."