Load-shedding reduced to Stage 1 on Friday night
Power utility Eskom will reduce load-shedding to Stage 1 from 21:00 on Friday night until 05:00 on Monday morning.
This was thanks in part to a return to service of a generating unit at Kusile, and a recovery of emergency power supplies.
"While there has been an improvement in the generation capacity, and a significant recovery in the emergency generation reserves, caution is still called for as this is not sufficient to suspend load-shedding at this point," Eskom said in a statement on Friday afternoon.
Since Thursday, a unit at the Hendrina Power Station was shut down to repair a boiler tube leak. A unit each at Duvha, Kriel and Hendrina power stations were taken offline for planned maintenance.
Total breakdowns amount to 13 277MW while planned maintenance is 6 728MW of capacity.
Eskom opted to implement stage 2 load-shedding at 11:00 on Wednesday due to a combination of factors, including low dam and diesel levels and unplanned trips of several units at power stations, combined with other units being out for planned maintenance.
Stage 2 load-shedding was initially expected to last until 05:00 on Monday morning.
Eskom CEO Andre de Ruyter said on Wednesday that the water in its dams, as well as its diesel reserves, were necessary as a backstop to prevent a "catastrophic blackout" if more units failed. When the levels dropped, it was necessary to implement load-shedding so that they could recover.
On Friday he announced that these levels were improving, and more units were expected to come back online.
"We will be monitoring the situation throughout the day and determine whether the risk has reduced enough," he said. "We will not unduly delay the lifting - but we will be prudent."
He said unit 4 at Kusile, used to assist during this bout of load-shedding, "was doing really well".
"But it is a non-commercial unit. We are not going to put this unit's eggs in one basket when we make a decision [on lifting load-shedding]."
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