Eskom announces stage 2 and 3 load shedding for the week – here’s the schedule

Eskom has announced the load shedding schedule for the coming week, starting with stage 3 on Monday morning and dropping to stage 2 by Friday.

“Sufficient progress has been made in recovering the emergency generation reserves, and it is anticipated that the dam levels at the pumped storage schemes will be fully replenished by tomorrow
morning,” it said.

Overnight, a generation unit each at Arnot and Majuba power stations returned to service. Eleven generation units are anticipated to return to service over the next 24 hours, helping to ease the
capacity constraints. This includes approximately 1,300MW of capacity from the Hydro de Cahorra Bassa in Mozambique, Eskom said.

However, a generation unit each at Tutuka Power Station and at Ingula Pumped Storage Scheme were forced offline for emergency repairs overnight, so stage 4 load shedding will continue until 05h00 on Monday.

The schedule is as follows:

• Stage 4 load shedding remains in place until 05h00 on Monday.
• State 3 load shedding will take place from 05h00 until 05h00 on Tuesday.
• Stage 2 load shedding will be implemented from 05h00 on Tuesday and remain in place until Friday midnight.

Eskom will hold a media briefing on Monday to update the public on the state of the power system. Any further significant changes will be promptly communicated. Eskom urges all South Africans to continue using electricity sparingly.

The group recently published its load shedding outlook for the rest of the year, noting that it has to keep unplanned outages below 13,000MW to minimise rolling blackouts.

In a more load shedding-heavy scenario, if outages remain above 14,500MW, stage 2 load shedding will be frequent for the foreseeable future. If the power utility is unable to keep outages under 16,000MW, load shedding at higher stages becomes the standard.

Schedules 

For people living in the major metros, load shedding schedules are available here:

• 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: Joburg has a plan to move away from Eskom and load shedding