Power system undergoes stress test

Wednesday, April 13, 2016

Pretoria - The resilience of the power system was stress tested on Tuesday following multiple trips of units at three power stations resulting in a loss of 3 535MW, said Eskom.

“No load shedding was implemented due to the increased resilience that Eskom has built into the power system over the past eight months,” said the power utility.

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.

At a separate and unrelated incident, Tutuka unit 3 also tripped.

“In an effort to stabilise the power grid, Eskom used five diesel generators.”

One Majuba unit, two Drakensberg units and one Tutuka unit have since been brought back on the grid.

In addition, Matla unit 1, Grootvlei unit 4 and Camden unit 5, that were on opportunity maintenance were returned to service to support the grid. - SAnews.gov.za