Photo by: Creamer Media
South Africa's electricity utility Eskom said on Thursday it would continue implementing "stage 4" rotational powercuts until Friday following a breakdown at its Koeberg station and the associated loss of generating capacity.
"The faulty pump at Koeberg has now been repaired and is running again. Eskom is in the process of obtaining regulatory approval in order to synchronise the generating unit back to service by Sunday," the state-owned entity said.
Koeberg is currently the only nuclear power station in Africa, located some 30 km north of Cape Town.
Eskom said it was currently utilising emergency generation reserves to supplement supply, with some generation units expected to return to service on Thursday evening, helping ease supply constraints.
The company, which supplies about 95 percent of the country's electricity, has been forced to intermittently apply load shedding for months, suppressing demand to avoid overwhelming the grid in the face of frequent breakdowns in its generating units attributed to years of inadequate maintenance.
Stage 4 rotational black outs, or load shedding, involve throttling 4,000 megawatts of demand at any given time.
"As the ageing fleet is currently constrained, unpredictable and vulnerable, we advise South Africans that the stage of load shedding may change at short notice should there be any unexpected change in the generation system performance," Eskom said on Thursday.
"Demand has also risen incrementally since January."