As South Africa enters day nine of a nationwide COVID-19 lockdown, power utility company Eskom has announced that it is doubling maintenance work at its plants.
“With the COVID-19 national lockdown in full effect, Eskom has experienced a significant reduction in demand for electricity,” said the state-owned power utility in a statement.
“Electricity usage has dropped by between 7 500MW and 9 000MW since the lockdown came into effect last week. This has allowed Eskom to operate without the need to implement load shedding,” it added.
The utility is making use of the low demand to carry out important short-term maintenance of generation infrastructure. In order to protect the integrity of the system, Eskom has taken some generation units offline.
From midnight on Friday April 3, 2020, Eskom added Koeberg Unit 2 to units taken off the grid. However, these will be able to return to service at short notice, should the need arise.
Koeberg Unit 2 is scheduled to return to service byApril 30, 2020, if not called before then.
“As part of protecting the integrity of the power system, Eskom has also issued force majeure notices to the wind independent power producers (IPPs).
“These notices serve to alert the wind IPPs of the possibility that Eskom may, from time to time, curtail their supply to the grid during the national lockdown,” the power utility said.
