Eskom on Monday said it was busy replenishing water and diesel reserves, but the efforts so far aren’t enough to avoid load shedding, which South Africans would be saddled with until at least Thursday.
Stage 2 rolling blackouts will resume from Monday from 9am.
The aim is to restore power during peak hour traffic each morning between 6am until 9am.
Eskom said it would monitor the breakdowns closely and was hopeful it could restore units back online.
The utility’s spokesperson Sikonathi Mantshantsha said: “We are busy pumping the water, particularly overnight, [and] things are looking well. We are getting enough diesel, we are loading it into the system. We haven’t gotten everything that we needed as yet. We are still loading it onto the system. We will continue with stage 2 load shedding on a daily basis until Thursday.”
Eskom’s chief operational manager Jan Oberholzer said the maintenance done at power stations have not been sufficient.
Oberholzer said Eskom has opted for quick fixes at several power plants and this has added to the need for load shedding.
Oberholzer said Eskom had not done consistent maintenance as it did not have the capacity to do so.
“The fact that we do not have sufficient capacity meant if you really needed to take a unit out and fix it, you
don’t do it. It’s now time to do the philosophy maintenance because if we don’t, the breakdowns will continue to escalate.”