Eskom said that load shedding may be implemented on short notice following outages at the Kriel Power Station in Mpumalanga on Monday morning.
State owned power utility company Eskom said that load shedding may be implemented at short notice following outages at the Kriel Power Station in Mpumalanga on Monday morning.
Eskom said the electrical faults that occurred at Kriel Power Station may be related to the heavy mist conditions at the time.
“During the early hours of this morning there were two electrical faults in quick succession in the high voltage yard at Kriel Power Station.
“The fault, which appears to be related to the heavy mist conditions experienced at the time is under investigation. The first fault caused units 1, 2 and 3 of the power station to trip, while the second fault tripped units 4 and 5. Unit 6 was off-line at the time,” Eskom said.
Eskom said more than 2,000 megawatts of generation capacity was removed from the grid because of the incident.
Currently, 1,018MW is on planned maintenance with another 17,022MW capacity unavailable due to breakdowns, Eskom said.
“Should there be any further loss of generation capacity during the day, or some units fail to return to service as anticipated, load shedding may be required to be implemented at short notice,” it said.
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