Why Eskom plunged South Africa back into stage-6 load shedding

Published: 2025-02-23 11:58 +02:00 by Duncan McLeod tag: Energy and sustainability

The electricity utility lost 10 generating units at the weekend but has said it is making good progress in restoring them to service.

Image: Reuters

Eskom CEO Dan Marokane said on Sunday that Eskom was forced to implement stage-6 load shedding in the early hours of Sunday after the electricity utility lost 10 generating units overnight.

Eskom chairman Mteto Nyati described the situation as “disappointing” but said Eskom is working hard to end load shedding permanently.

The latest bout of load shedding marks the second time in a month that Eskom has been forced to impose the rolling blackouts, which, when implemented, have a direct negative impact on economic growth. Before these latest incidents, South Africa had enjoyed 10 consecutive months of no load shedding.

Eskom CEO Dan Marokane said the company is already making progress in bringing units that failed at the weekend back online, including those at Camden, Majuba and Medupi, which were the main stations that contributed to the weekend’s problems.

Marokane said Eskom:

Lost multiple units at Majuba power station caused by an overload on a transformer related to the start-up of a unit what was coming out of a long-term outage. Suffered a trip at Medupi caused by “under-frequency on the network”. The problems as Majuba and Medupi prompted the shift at 5.30pm on Saturday to stage-3 load shedding. Suffered a failure in the early hours of Sunday morning on a hydraulic valve at the Camden power station, which tripped multiple units. This promoted the move to stage-6 load shedding.

Six units back online

Until now, Majuba and Camden have been two of Eskom’s better-performing power stations with energy availability factors of 68% and 61%, respectively.

“Where are we now?” asked Marokane. “Of the 10 units we lost overnight, we have returned six units. As we are sitting here, another from Matimba came online. We recovered 3 200MW of capacity overnight. We have five to six units that will come online today and will take stock after the evening peak.” — © 2025 NewsCentral Media

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South Africa faces stage-6 power cuts as generation units fail

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