Eskom pushes load shedding to stage 2 as demand spikes

After announcing extended load shedding at stage 1 until Saturday, Eskom has now escalated outages to stage 2 to safeguard the grid.
Load shedding will now be at stage 2 from 21h00 on Wednesday night, continuing until 05h00 on Saturday.
The escalation comes after the power utility lost more generating units at four power stations: Medupi, Arnot, Duvha and Kendal.
“In addition to Eskom’s inability to supply the full demand, we have seen an increase in demand, which has put further strain on the emergency generation reserves today,” it said.
The contributing factors for the losses today are boiler tube leaks and units tripping, it said, as well as delays in returning other units back to power.
In order to safeguard the power system, regrettably loadshedding will be increased to Stage 2
from 21:00 tonight pic.twitter.com/t2vFjtD1lE— Eskom Hld SOC Ltd (@Eskom_SA) March 17, 2021
For those living in the major metros, they can check to see when they will be affected:
- City of Johannesburg
- City of Ekurhuleni
- City of Tshwane
- City of Cape Town (PDF)
- Nelson Mandela Bay
- eThekwini
- Manguang
- Buffalo City
For access to other load shedding schedules, Eskom has made them available on loadshedding.eskom.co.za.
Smartphone users can also download the app EskomSePush to receive push notifications when load shedding is implemented, as well as the times the area you are in will be off.
Read: Learn to live with load shedding, or get off Eskom’s grid: expert