South Africa’s Eskom suspends power cuts

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – South African power utility Eskom on Sunday suspended scheduled power cuts after being able to get generating units at one of its power stations working again following heavy rain that disrupted operations.

Eskom had shut down five generating units on Friday at its Medupi plant after it was unable to get coal into the units following heavy rain.

“Eskom teams returned four generation units to service at the Medupi power station as the coal constraints improved,” it said in a statement.

The utility added that two other units which were offline had also been returned to serviced.

State-owned Eskom regularly implements outages in Africa’s most industrialised nation because of faults at its coal-fired power stations, constraining economic growth.

Of Eskom’s total nominal capacity of about 44,000 MW, more than 4,664 MW is offline for planned maintenance and another 13,539 MW is unavailable owing to breakdowns, it said.

It said the power system remained vulnerable and unpredictable.