Thursday, May 14, 2015

800 megawatts at Medupi power station almost finished and stage one load-shedding in progress

Mbasa Gqokoma
14 May 2015

Eskom said it is gradually reaching its target of eight-hundred-megawatts at unit six at the Medupi power station.

The power utility’s Acting Chief Executive Brian Molefe said this is a significant milestone and believe that power from the unit will go a long way in alleviating the capacity challenges the country is facing.

Medupi has experienced construction delays over the past few months due to strike action by workers.

Eskom Spokesperson Khulu Phasiwe says if everything goes according to plan, then next month in June we will be having consistently 800 megawatts coming from that unit, and it’s all credit to the workers that have helped us to get where we are now, but also to our technicians who have been working around the clock including public holidays to make sure that we are where we are now and also in an effort to make sure that we avoid and minimise the risk of load shedding.

Meanwhile Eskom has started implementing stage one load shedding which will end at ten’ o clock tonight due to the system being under pressure.

Eskom Spokesperson Khulu Phasiwe said the grid is severely constrained because due to the change in whether and that more and more people are using electric heaters.

Phasiwe says in addition to the normal usage that we see, with people preparing meals and taking showers, we also have this added pressure of heaters.

That is why the system is continuously under pressure, mainly it is because of our generating units which are currently offline and as a result because we don’t have enough generating capacity we are unable to meet that demand, Phasiwe added.

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