Eskom plans to ease load shedding this weekend – here’s the schedule
Power utility Eskom says that load shedding will be eased over the weekend – with hopes that it will move to stage 1 on Sunday (12 March).
Stage 4 load shedding will continue on Friday, before being downgraded to stage 3 on Saturday. The group is planning stage 1 on Sunday, before escalating back to stage 4 in the new week.
The schedule is as follows:
Friday, 10 March
- Stage 4: until 00h00
Saturday, 11 March
- Stage 4: 00h00 to 05h00
- Stage 3: 05h00 to 00h00
Sunday, 12 March
- Stage 3: 00h00 to 05h00
- Stage 1: 05h00 to 16h00
- Stage 3: 16h00 to 00h00
Monday, 13 March
- Stage 3: 00h00 to 05h00
Over the past 24 hours, a generating unit each at Duvha, Kriel and Matla power stations were successfully returned to service.
During the same period a generating unit each at Camden and Kendal power stations were taken offline for repairs.
The return to service of a generating unit each at Hendrina, Medupi and Tutuka, power stations are delayed.
The repairs to the damaged towers from Cahora Bassa in Mozambique is continuing and is anticipated to be completed by early next week, Eskom said.
Breakdowns are currently reduced to 16,469MW of generating capacity while 4,652MW of generating capacity is out of service for planned maintenance.
South Africa has been in a state of near-permanent load shedding since September 2022, and has experienced 130 consecutive days of blackouts since late October.
Load shedding has hit every single day of 2023 so far, often at high stages.
The rolling blackouts have had a dire impact on the economy, leading to a GDP contraction of 1.3% in the fourth quarter of 2022, with many economists expecting the same or worse for the first quarter of 2023.
This would place South Africa into a technical recession.
Given the South African Reserve Bank’s growth estimates for 2023 – a paltry 0.3% – being contingent on South Africa only experiencing 200 days of load shedding, the current prospects for annual GDP do not look good.
Economists have warned that if load shedding is not resolved, South Africa risks facing recession over a much longer term.
Unfortunately for the country, there are no short-term fixes for the outages, and all data points to the situation getting worse as the country heads into the winter months.
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: Things are looking very, very bad for load shedding in South Africa
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