Eskom gives Christmas load shedding update

 ·23 Dec 2022

Eskom chief operating officer Jan Oberholzer says that Eskom will do its best to keep the lights on for Christmas but warned that things could change very quickly.

“It is our intention not to have load shedding on Christmas Day; however, we are monitoring the situation,” he said.

The current outlook, barring any challenges over the next day or so, is that emergency reserves will have to be used to keep load shedding at bay. The intention is to keep load shedding suspended for at least ‘large parts’ of Christmas, he said.

Oberholzer said that Eskom would assess the situation on Saturday and make an announcement early on Sunday morning.

Aside from the Christmas update, Oberholzer said that there are no other changes to the current load shedding outlook.

Eskom is currently load shedding at stage 4, which will continue until 05h00 on Saturday morning. Thereafter, stage 3 load shedding will be implemented until 05h00 on Sunday when the next update will be given.

Friday, 23 December

  • Stage 4: until 00h00

Saturday, 24 December

  • Stage 4: 00h00 to 05h00
  • Stage 3: 05h00 to 00h00

Sunday, 25 December

  • Stage 3: 00h00 to 05h00
  • Load shedding TBD

Oberholzer reiterated that with the current breakdowns, Koeberg 1 offline and Kusile and Medupi units still offline, South Africa faces a difficult year ahead.

“We see a challenging period ahead of us,” he said.

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:

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: Massive loss for Eskom

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