Good news as Eskom scales back load shedding to Stage 2 as units restored

Eskom eased power cuts Stage 2 at 05:00 on Tuesday after the power utility managed to restore several generating units that had unexpectedly gone offline over the weekend.

As reported by The South African website, the crisis began on Saturday when an issue at Majuba power station in Mpumalanga led to a unit failure, which in turn affected operations at Medupi in Limpopo, removing 800MW from the grid.

By early Sunday, the situation had worsened, with four additional units at Camden power station shutting down due to a hydraulic valve failure, forcing an escalation to Stage 6.

By Monday, Eskom had managed to recover most of the lost capacity, bringing load shedding down to Stage 4.

Affected units were restored

Late on Monday evening, the power utility announced further improvements, saying that eight of the 10 affected units had been restored, with an additional 1 146MW expected to be available overnight.

Eskom noted that emergency reserves were being replenished, but had not yet reached optimal levels.

A further update on the power situation is expected later on Tuesday.

The last bout of load shedding prior to this disruption occurred in January, which followed a 10-month period of uninterrupted electricity supply.

This developing news story is being updated and more details will be published shortly. Please refresh the page for the fullest version.

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