Easter joy turns to power outage nightmare: Eskom lambasted for increased load-shedding

The celebrations of the Easter weekend have been quickly forgotten after Eskom announced the ramping up of load-shedding from stage 2 to stage 4 on Tuesday morning.

The power utility gave South Africans no time before cutting off some users.

“Regretfully, Eskom has just been forced to implement stage 4 load-shedding at 7.20am following Majuba Unit 5 and Tutuka Unit 4 tripping,” it said in a brief statement.

Load-shedding was already being implemented at stage 2 until Wednesday morning after difficulties with power generation that took much of the grid offline.

In a statement on Sunday, Eskom said: “The loss of four additional generation units at Matla, Tutuka, Duvha and Arnot power stations over the past 24 hours, exacerbated by the delay in units returning to service at Camden, Matla, Grootvlei and Tutuka power stations, has unfortunately necessitated the implementation of load-shedding.

“The power system continues to be fragile and Eskom is forced to implement load-shedding to manage and replenish emergency generation reserves, on which it has been relying to supply electricity this week.

We currently have 5,474MW on planned maintenance, while another 17,018MW of capacity is unavailable due to unplanned breakdowns.

“The power system remains unpredictable, and Eskom would like to inform the public that any further deterioration in generation capacity may require higher stages of load-shedding.”

The power utility is expected to hold a briefing later to update the nation on the current system challenges.

Meanwhile, social media has been flooded with reaction to the latest power cuts, with renewed calls for executives and management at the power utility to be held to account and take pay cuts.

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