On Monday, South African power utility Eskom announced that it would be implementing Stage 6 loadshedding following a technical problem at the Medupi Power Station.
The parastatal said on social media that Stage 6 is “no cause for alarm as the system is being effectively controlled.” Stage 6 requires 6,000MW to be rotationally loadshed.
#Eskom has moved from stage 4 to stage 6 #loadshedding. @UvekaR spoke to Eskom COO, Jan Oberholzer. #SouthAfricaTonight Courtesy #DStv403 pic.twitter.com/ZlYGs63y4H
— eNCA (@eNCA) December 9, 2019
After a weekend of rolling outages due to unplanned breakdowns peaking at 12,300MW, the utility is battling to keep the lights on for South Africans.
Stage 6 was implemented throughout the night and has been reduced to Stage 4 for Tuesday [10 December] until further notice.
Interestingly, on the same day that Medupi encounters issues, the South African President pinned the below tweet to his public Twitter feed:
When I visited #Medupi power station for the first time two weeks ago, I was struck by how massive it is. It is one thing to be told in a briefing that, when completed, Medupi will be the fourth largest power stations of its kind in the world. https://t.co/bjq7hpTNO7 pic.twitter.com/bupuy34lWq
— Cyril Ramaphosa 🇿🇦 (@CyrilRamaphosa) December 9, 2019
ESI Africa will provide regular updates should the system progress further than Stage 6.
