Eskom closed one of the units at Duvha Power Station located 15km east of Witbank in Mpumalanga. The station, according to Eskom, was emitting smoke. Energy experts cited that this resulted in only one generator unit being operational because two were down for maintenance.
Eskom said that it is possible that five units were down due to planned and unplanned maintenance as well as this further shut down. That would mean the power station, which became operational in 1984, was only producing 600 MW of its 3 600 MW capacity. Eskom said that it was going to introduce stage 2 load shedding from 16:00 to 22:00 on Tuesday. Serious investigation needed
Eskom said investigations were underway
In November 2014, Majuba Power Station’s coal silo collapsed thereby negatively impacting coal supplies to all six units at the power station, which had a total capacity of 3 600 MW, or about 10% of the country’s power needs.
On 1 February 2015, unit 1 at Koeberg Power Station was closed as a result of human error, causing 900 MW being cut from the system.
Delays at Eskom’s build programme at Medupi and Kusile have also stopped the release of 4 764 MW and 4 800 MW respectively.Eskom said that Koeberg’s unit 1 and Medupi’s unit 6 (794 MW) should start adding power to the grid by June 2015.
No winter load shedding – Eskom
Eskom said it did not anticipate any load shedding to occur during winter, which only starts on June 1. The organisation said its long-term plan was to decrease planned outages – this week sitting at 6 322 MW – during winter to 4 000 MW.