Load shedding pushed to stage 5
Power utility Eskom says that load shedding will be escalated to stage 5 on Monday (24 July) after the group suffered further delays in getting generating units back online.
Stage 5 load shedding will now kick in at 14h00 and will continue to 05h00 on Tuesday. Thereafter, stage 4 load shedding will continue indefinitely.
The sudden change in schedule comes a day after electricity minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa criticised the lack of stability coming out of the power utility, saying that businesses were struggling to plan ahead.
He said the government and Eskom would work to reduce the uncertainty.
“I think it’s particularly unhelpful when Eskom has to go out from time to time with the announcement of the intensity of load shedding.
“I think there was one day where we shifted the intensity of load shedding about three times in a space of about six hours. I think that undermines the credibility of our efforts, but also the ability of industries and households to be able to plan because they would have expected lower stages of load shedding,” he said during a media briefing on Sunday.
He said that as extra megawatts are added to the grid, some of these problematic units will be taken out for service to ensure they are more reliable.
“This will give us an opportunity that when we make a promise of a Stage ‘X’ you won’t find that much later we have to make amendments to that announcement, which undermine the statements Eskom releases from time to time.”
Ramokgopa said additional interventions are needed to ensure the state-owned entity can turn that around.
“The levels of load shedding are not going down to where we want it to be. Even with this elevated the peak demand in my view when I was sharing with the team is that we should not be in way upwards of Stage 3 but it’s something that requires our collective attention.
“I do promise that we’re going to address this with the urgency that the state is required.”
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: Western Cape hospitals are spending millions to avoid load shedding
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