Stage 5 load shedding hitting this week – here’s the new schedule

Power utility Eskom has announced that load shedding will be pushed to stage 5 on Monday (21 November) during the evenings between 16h00 and 00h00 to Wednesday (23 November) after it experienced more breakdowns at its stations.
Stage 4 load shedding will be implemented from 17:00 this afternoon (20 November) until 16:00 on Monday.
The schedule is as follows:
Sunday, 20 November
- Stage 4: 17h00 to 00h00
Monday, 21 November
- Stage 4: 00h00 to 16h00
- Stage 5: 16h00 to 00h00
Tuesday, 22 November
- Stage 4: 00h00 to 05h00
- Stage 3: 05h00 to 16h00
- Stage 5: 16h00 to 00h00
Wednesday, 23 November
- Stage 4: 00h00 to 05h00
- Stage 2: 05h00 to 16h00
- Stage 5: 16h00 to 00h00
“The increased implementation of load shedding is mainly due to the high levels of breakdowns and the depleted emergency generation reserves,” Eskom said.
#POWERALERT1#Stage4 loadshedding will be implemented at 17:00 this afternoon until 16:00 on Monday. Various stages of loadshedding will be implemented during the week pic.twitter.com/UlfcFPBYlx
— Eskom Hld SOC Ltd (@Eskom_SA) November 20, 2022
Three units at Kusile Power Station are offline due to the duct (chimney structure) failure late in October and will remain offline for a few months while repairs to the chimney system take place.
Unit one of Koeberg Nuclear Power Station will continue to generate at a reduced output over the next three weeks as the fuel is depleted ahead of the refuelling and maintenance outage scheduled to commence in December 2022.
Since Sunday morning, a generating unit each at Arnot, Grootvlei and Majuba power stations has been taken offline for repairs. A generating unit at Kriel Power Station was returned to service. We currently have 5 354MW on planned maintenance, while another 14 495MW of capacity is unavailable due to breakdowns.
The power utility reminded South Africans that load shedding is implemented only as a last resort in view of the shortage of generation capacity and the need to attend to breakdowns.
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.