Load shedding pushed to stage 6 once again – here’s the new schedule

Power utility has been forced to push load shedding to stage 6 once again following more breakdowns at its power stations.

Stage 6 load shedding will be implemented from 20h00 on Tuesday night (20 December) and carry on until 05h00 Wednesday (21 December).

Stage 4 load shedding will resume from 05h00 until further notice, Eskom said.

Tuesday, 20 December

• Stage 4: until 20h00
• Stage 6: 20h00 to 00h00

Wednesday, 21 December

• Stage 6: 00h00 to 05h00
• Stage 4: 05h00 until further notice

“This is necessary to ensure sufficient generation capacity is available tonight to replenish the dam levels at the pumped storage power station so that this capacity will be available during the day tomorrow,” it said.

The breakdown of six generating units during the day has necessitated the escalation in the load shedding stage, it said.

South Africa is likely to sit with prolonged levels of load shedding for the foreseeable future. Last Saturday (10 December) 1,000MW was removed from the grid through Koeberg unit 1 being taken offline, and approximately 3,000MW is offline from various breakdowns at Kusile and Medupi.

According to Eskom’s outlook for the next year, it needs to keep breakdowns below 13,000MW to stave off the worst of load shedding, but the utility has struggled to keep outages below 16,000MW – the worst-case scenario in its plans.

Eskom CEO Andre de Ruyter announced his resignation this week on the back of the worst levels of load shedding on record. While Public Enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan acknowledged that de Ruyter is not to blame for the load shedding, the power utility has not been able to resolve the crisis under his leadership.

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: The last 2 weeks of load shedding ‘a walk in the park’ compared to what’s coming: analyst