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Power system stable as Cahora Bassa comes back online

Earlier this month Eskom revealed that South Africa will be receiving a reduced supply of electricity from the Cahora Bassa hydroelectric plant in Mozambique – and the very same day Stage 1 loadshedding was implemented.

SA’s power importation was reduced to only 650 MW from the usual supply of 1 500 MW from the plant due to maintenance being done. The upgrades and maintenance was expected to last two weeks, and the plant has slowly been coming back online.

“Maintenance work at the Cahora Bassa hydroelectric dam in Mozambique has been progressing well, with exports to South Africa expected to gradually ramp up from today,” Eskom said in an update.

It added that the switch-on is a gradual process, and that the full 1 500MW from Cahora Bassa is expected to flow into the country by today.

Eskom explained that during the maintenance period only 2 hours and 20 minutes of loadshedding was experienced by residents, which equates to 96% of South Africans still receiving uninterrupted electricity supply on the day.

If the last loadshedding day is taken out of the equation, the last 43 days have been almost loadshedding-free.

At the time, Eskom said that it had contingency plans if the supply dips below a certain threshold.

“Eskom will utilise its emergency reserves to augment the capacity shortfall as a result of this planned outage.”

[Image – CC 2.0 by lifeofpix]

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