Cape power cuts to end tomorrow

CAPE TOWN – Parts of Cape Town, South Africa’s top tourist city, are facing three more days of blackouts, supplier Eskom said on Wednesday, with supply only expected at full power by tomorrow.

The Western Cape province, which includes Cape Town, has suffered intermittent outages since Sunday, gridlocking streets and forcing shop owners and factories to close their doors. The disruptions, which analysts estimate could cost the economy more than 500 million rand, follow technical problems at nuclear power plant Koeberg, that have further strained waning capacity.”I would hope that by Saturday things will be back to normal,” said Tony Stott, manager for generation, at the state-owned company.”But that is subject to no other problems manifesting themselves.”The company earlier this week assured the government that the situation should be back to normal by Wednesday.On Wednesday, Eskom executives and government leaders in Western Cape addressed a news conference in the dark because of the power outages, television images showed.Eskom says the outages are short-term and relate largely to problems at Cape Town’s 1 800 megawatt Koeberg facility, which has been shut down four times since November last year.The only functioning reactor at Koeberg, Africa’s only nuclear-fired plant that supplies roughly half of the region’s power, was shut down on Saturday as the grid’s capacity dropped after another plant tripped in the northern Mpumalanga province.The second reactor has been down for two months and will remain so for the foreseeable future due to severe damage caused to its generator by a misplaced bolt.”We are still on schedule for (Koeberg) unit two to return to production at the end of the week …it should be at full power by Saturday,” Stott said.Eskom said it was intensifying a nationwide campaign to encourage its customers to conserve electricity, by switching off all non-essential equipment for a couple of hours each day.South African President Thabo Mbeki told state commercial radio Metro FM that the energy problems were of great concern and the government was committed to finding the right balance for the future electricity supplies.- Nampa-ReutersThe disruptions, which analysts estimate could cost the economy more than 500 million rand, follow technical problems at nuclear power plant Koeberg, that have further strained waning capacity.”I would hope that by Saturday things will be back to normal,” said Tony Stott, manager for generation, at the state-owned company.”But that is subject to no other problems manifesting themselves.”The company earlier this week assured the government that the situation should be back to normal by Wednesday.On Wednesday, Eskom executives and government leaders in Western Cape addressed a news conference in the dark because of the power outages, television images showed.Eskom says the outages are short-term and relate largely to problems at Cape Town’s 1 800 megawatt Koeberg facility, which has been shut down four times since November last year.The only functioning reactor at Koeberg, Africa’s only nuclear-fired plant that supplies roughly half of the region’s power, was shut down on Saturday as the grid’s capacity dropped after another plant tripped in the northern Mpumalanga province.The second reactor has been down for two months and will remain so for the foreseeable future due to severe damage caused to its generator by a misplaced bolt.”We are still on schedule for (Koeberg) unit two to return to production at the end of the week …it should be at full power by Saturday,” Stott said.Eskom said it was intensifying a nationwide campaign to encourage its customers to conserve electricity, by switching off all non-essential equipment for a couple of hours each day.South African President Thabo Mbeki told state commercial radio Metro FM that the energy problems were of great concern and the government was committed to finding the right balance for the future electricity supplies.- Nampa-Reuters