Eskom warns South Africa still at risk of load shedding
Eskom CEO Andre de Ruyter says there is still a risk of load shedding, especially with the unit outages at Koeberg.
De Ruyter and other executives gave an update on the state of the country's electricity system on Thursday.
Unit 2 at the Koeberg nuclear plant was taken offline last week for maintenance expected to last five months.
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"The outage at Koeberg 2 will be followed by a similar outage for Koeberg 1. So the system will be constrained by that reduced contribution of our most competitive and also our most reliable plants,” said De Ruyter.
Last year South Africa saw 51 days of load shedding - the highest on record.
In November, the utility said it had found evidence of sabotage at some key sites, prompting some of the rolling blackouts.
De Ruyter said security has been amped up.
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"Eskom management responded very decisively to this challenge and we have employed 450 additional security guards.
“We have deployed drones equipped with inferred cameras to also be able to operate at night as well as install intelligent cameras that can detect untoward behaviour at our facility.”
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