About 500 people were stuck on top of Table Mountain when a back-up generator belonging to the Table Mountain Aerial Cableway Company (TMACC) failed to kick into gear on Monday as Eskom announced it was moving from Stage 4 to Stage 6 load shedding.
TMACC managing director Wahida Parker said: “Power surges are believed to have caused the failure of our generator. Visitors who were at the bottom waiting to go up are being offered free tickets for an alternative day.
“It was a great mixture of people. There were some overseas visitors in the group – the group was approximately 500 people.
"There were elderly people, families with children and, as per our processes, we brought down the infirm and mothers with babies first. We managed to bring everybody down by nine o'clock.
"Our technical team is monitoring the impact of the sudden implementation of Stage 6 load shedding to best accommodate our visitors in a safe and responsible manner.
"We are doing everything within our power to make sure any visitor’s experience of Table Mountain is a positive one, even under these extreme conditions.”
Parker said experts have been brought in to fix the generator.
File picture: David Ritchie/African News Agency (ANA)
Stage 6 was active from 6pm until 11pm on Monday.
Eskom said it had lost additional generation units, increasing unplanned breakdowns (UCLF) to 14 200MW.
"With a higher demand of about 600MW and a shortage of capacity, this “necessitates load shedding” to move from Stage 2 to Stage 4 and then Stage 6 as of Monday night.
On Sunday night, Eskom said the probability of load shedding remained high for the week due to a shortage of capacity.
“This follows a technical problem at Medupi Power Station affecting additional generation supply. The heavy rains have caused coal handling and operational problems at several power stations.
"In addition, with the incessant rains, we are beginning to experience flooding at some power stations, which have further led to load losses and have affected supply as the rainy weather persists.
‘‘We continue to utilise diesel and water resources at our open cycle gas turbines and pumped storage schemes respectively, to supplement capacity,” Eskom said.
Date: 10 December 2019
Eskom is currently implementing Stage 4 rotational loadshedding until 23:00 tonight. @News24 @TimesLIVE @eNCA @iol @SABCNewsOnline @TheCitizen_News @SAfmRadio @POWER987News @ukhozi_fm @METROFMSA @TheCitizen_News pic.twitter.com/LcQM8dRbFD
— Eskom Hld SOC Ltd (@Eskom_SA) December 10, 2019
Eskom chief operating officer Jan Oberholzer didn't altogether rule out Stage 8 load shedding on Monday, cautioning that generating plants remain unpredictable and unreliable.
“What Stage 8 means is that we need to shed 8 000MW. Do we see ourselves getting there? We trust and hope that we never get there but never is a long time,” Oberholzer said.
Read: Load shedding schedules