By Anait Miridzhanian
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) -South African power company Eskom expects record “Stage 6” outages, involving 10 hours daily without power, to remain until the peak hours late on Wednesday before they are reduced in intensity, Chief Executive Andre de Ruyter said on Monday.
Eskom supplies the vast majority of power in Africa’s most industrialised nation, but its ageing coal-fired power stations frequently break down.
On Sunday, the company ramped up scheduled power cuts to Stage 6, requiring up to 6,000 megawatts of capacity to be shed from the national grid and translating to 10 hours a day without power for many South African households.
“By Thursday, (we expect) we will then be able to start phasing that down to load-shedding Stage 4 with load-shedding Stage 3 being reached by the weekend,” de Ruyter told a news conference, using a term for rolling power cuts.
Eskom had received the backing of the National Treasury for diesel purchases for its open-cycle gas turbines, he said.
“We have obtained the support of National Treasury to give assurance to the banks from whom we are borrowing money to buy the diesel, that National Treasury will stand behind these loans,” de Ruyter said.
The outgoing chief executive, who will step down at the end of next month, dismissed the possibility of a total power system blackout.
“We do have contingency plans in place, should there be a further loss of generation capacity. At this point in time we do not anticipate that there is a risk of going beyond Stage 8,” de Ruyter said.
Eskom has implemented power cuts every day this year, following 2022 when it had the highest number of days with outages.
(Reporting by Anait MiridzhanianEditing by Alexander Winning and Bernadette Baum)
