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Earth leakage takes out six of Eskom’s generating units

Despite losing almost 10% of its generating power in one day, Eskom managed to avoid loadshedding on Tuesday.

According to the company, a number of faults and trips around the country resulted in a loss of 3.5GW in generating power.

As it stands, Eskom has the capacity to generate around 33.8GW of power, with peak demand in the country rising up to as much as 30.9GW. That means there is actually a very small margin for error if something does go wrong.

In a statement, Eskom explained that three units at the newly-constructed Majuba power station went offline, as well as two others.

“Due to the interconnectedness of the power system, an earth fault at the high voltage yard at Tutuka power station had resulted in three units of the Majuba power station and two units at Drakensberg Pumped Storage being offline,” Eskom’s statement read.

Tutuka power station’s unit 3 also went offline, adding more strain to the national grid.

Since the power generating failure would have likely pushed SA into loadshedding again, Eskom had to switch to generating power with five diesel generators.

At the time of writing, a number of the downed power stations have been brought back online, including one Majuba unit, two Drakensberg units and the Tutuka unit.

[Image – CC by 2.0/Sarah Macmillan]

 

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