The margin between available capacity‚ including very expensive open cycle gas turbines‚ on May 27 was 33‚986 Megawatts (MW) and peak demand of 33‚834MW was only 0.4 percent‚ Eskom said in its latest system status bulletin.
The reason for this extremely tiny margin compared with the international norm of 15 percent was due to a combination of cold weather‚ that raised heating demand‚ as well as having 21.5 percent of its potential capacity off line.
Planned maintenance was 4‚711MW‚ while unplanned outages were 4‚916MW.
Monday’s unplanned outages compare with 4‚440MW on May 23‚ this year’s low of 3‚673MW on May 16 and this year’s peak of 7‚657MW on April 22.
