No loadshedding is anticipated for Wednesday

Eskom does not expect any loadshedding Wednesday.

There is still sufficient capacity available from its emergency reserves to meet Wednesday's forecasted demand, it said in a statement on Tuesday evening.

There was adequate generation capacity to meet Tuesday's demand in electricity, and as a result no loadshedding was implemented.

"We are monitoring the system closely and we will continue to give periodic updates on the status of the power system as things may change at short notice," it said.

The flooding at some of its power stations in Mpumalanga meant that it had challenges with coal handling which resulted in the loss of three generation units overnight on Monday evening.

Some of these units will only be returned to service on Wednesday. As a result, it had to utilise some of its emergency reserves, which include open cycle gas turbines and the pumped storage scheme, to supplement capacity.

By 16:30 on Tuesday afternoon unplanned outages or breakdowns were at 13 625MW, but Eskom said its teams are hard at work to bring these unplanned outages back to service in order to increase available capacity.

"It is important to note that the power system is vulnerable and volatile with an ageing fleet that requires higher levels of maintenance. Getting back to stability will take some time and we request our customers to work with us by reducing their demand while we work on improving the effectiveness of our maintenance," said Eskom.