South Africa has reached 7,000MW of load shedding

South Africa has attained an unparalleled degree of power rotation.

Eskom dropped 7,045 megawatts from the grid on Tuesday, spokeswoman Sikonathi Mantshantsha said in a tweet.

Each 1,000MW signifies a load-shedding level, and according to Bloomberg, Mantshantsha has practically verified that Eskom has progressed to stage 7.

It should be emphasised, however, that Eskom has not yet officially declared stage 7. Its most recent declaration, made on Sunday, declared that South Africa will be operating under stage 6 power outages until further notice.

South Africa’s total demand at 19:25 on Tuesday evening, according to Mantshantsha, was 30,480MW, while available generation capacity was 23,289MW.

At peak, Eskom recorded 1,262MW of renewable energy, comprising 791MW wind, 390MW concentrated solar, and 81MW photovoltaic solar.

It also made use of five independent open-cycle gas turbines (OCGTs) as well as 14 Eskom-owned OCGTs.

Eskom’s two biggest peaking OCGT power facilities, Ankerlig and Gourikwa, both feature 14 producing units.

This indicates that Eskom used all or virtually all of its emergency generation capacity yesterday night.