The reopening of schools and breakdowns of power generation units mean stage 6 load-shedding will continue.
Though a unit at Koeberg nuclear power station was returned to service on Sunday, Eskom said other breakdowns have forced it to keep implementing stage 6 this week.
On Tuesday, Eskom told TimesLIVE Premium: “While some units have returned to service, other units suffered breakdowns and there was an increase in demand after the Easter holidays and the reopening of schools which required that stage 6 load-shedding be implemented.
“After a breakdown of a generation unit at Medupi power station, Stage 6 load-shedding will continue until further notice.”
The Sunday Times reported at the weekend South Africa was silently slapped with stage 8 power cuts on Thursday during the evening peak as the power utility had energy availability of 23,771MW against power demand of 30,747MW.
Eskom shed 7,072MW, according to its official daily energy generation system update. Stage 8 requires 7,001MW to 8,000MW being cut.
On Wednesday last week, Eskom announced implementation of stage 6 from 4pm, citing breakdowns which amounted to 16,772MW.
According to Eskom's evening peak energy update shared with TimesLIVE Premium, the utility had to shed 5,741MW on Saturday while on Sunday 5,455MW was shed.
The utility had an energy shortage of about 6,000MW, with Saturday's evening peak demand standing at 30,330MW against available energy of 23,695MW. On Sunday, the demand stood at 30,997MW against available energy of 23,940MW, according to Eskom spokesperson Daphne Mokwena.
The Monday evening peak figures were not immediately available.
“Eskom will brief media in the next week or two to give a comprehensive presentation on the winter outlook,” it said.
Energy expert Lungile Mashele said with winter on its way, the energy situation was likely to worsen.
Mashele said Eskom's ageing coal-fired generation fleet has not been well-maintained and is now unreliable.
“It's important to remember that Sasol is running a similar aged fleet, but they have the benefit of doing reliability maintenance, predictability maintenance, an adequate maintenance budget and outage plan,” Mashele said.
Eskom has warned the increase in demand as winter approaches will put additional strain on its power generation system.
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