South Africa’s struggling state power utility doubled the severity of nationwide power cuts on Tuesday after its sole nuclear plant, which it considers its most reliable generation facility, experienced problems with one of its turbines.
Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd. implemented Stage 4 outages, which entails removing 4,000 megawatts from the grid, after disconnecting its Koeberg Unit 1, the utility said in a statement. The additional loss of about 930 megawatts of generating capacity forced it to increase earlier cuts caused by delays in returning other faulty units to service.
The indebted utility has started a new strategy under Chief Executive Officer Andre de Ruyter known as “philosophy maintenance,” which involves shutting down mainly coal-fired stations that generate the bulk of its power for as long as needed to make overdue repairs. Eskom is also fixing defects at two new plants, which are still under construction.
Koeberg, located 27 kilometers (17 miles) north of Cape Town, is among the safest reactors of its kind in the world, according to Eskom.
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