Eskom’s De Ruyter warns of possibility of stage 6 power cuts

Eskom CEO Andre de Ruyter in January, 2020.
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Gallo Images/Business Day/Freddy Mavunda

Eskom CEO Andre de Ruyter said that the grid was under pressure as the strike by some of its staff continues at power plants.

South Africa is running the risk of stage six power cuts later on Tuesday.

That’s the latest warning from Eskom.

The country is still on stage four for now but we’ve just heard that at least 10 power units have now tripped.

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Stage 6 power cuts would see South Africans forced to endure between three or four bouts of rolling blackouts, which equates to a total of at least six hours without power on any day.

Eskom CEO Andre de Ruyter said that the grid was under pressure as the strike by some of its staff continues at power plants.

This being winter, the load forecast for this evening is quite high – 31,990 megawatts of demand. We have capacity available, at this stage, forecast for 27,124 MW and that of course creates the shortfall in generation capacity.

| De Ruyter said.

De Ruyter said that they were burning through diesel to try and keep the lights on.

We are burning about two million litres of diesel per day at both Ankerlig as well as Gourikwa – those are our gas turbine open cycle sites. For the month of June to date we have already consumed 85 million litres of diesel.

By Graeme Raubenheimer and originally appeared in Eye Witness News