Load shedding pushed even higher this week – here’s the latest schedule
Power utility Eskom has announced that load shedding will be pushed even higher this week, with daytime stage 4 load shedding ramping up to stage 5 before hitting stage 6 at night, as previously announced.
The further escaltion in outages is due to the group not having enough generation capacity and the need to replenish emergency reserves.
This means instead of a stage 4/stage 6 rotation until Saturday (2 December), it will now be a stage 5/stage 6 rotation.
The schedule is as follows:
Wednesday, 29 November
- Stage 6: 00h00 to 05h00
- Stage 5: 05h00 to 20h00
- Stage 6: 20h00 to 00h00
Thursday, 30 November
- Stage 6: 00h00 to 05h00
- Stage 5: 05h00 to 20h00
- Stage 6: 20h00 to 00h00
Friday, 1 December
- Stage 6: 00h00 to 05h00
- Stage 5: 05h00 to 20h00
- Stage 6: 20h00 to 00h00
Saturday, 2 December
- Stage 6: 00h00 to 05h00
- Stage and time TBA
“Eskom will closely monitor the power system and communicate any changes to load shedding should it be required,” it said.
Authorities have laid the blame for stage 6 load shedding at the feet of the emergency reserve usage, which the utility has had to dip into to meet growing demand and energy shortfalls.
Analysis of Eskom’s plant performance data shows that lower demand has been a key reason why South Africa has been able to keep load shedding at lower stages in recent months, but a heatwave throughout the country has caused this demand to increase.
Meanwhile, Eskom has entrenched breakdowns and outages above 30% of capacity and has turned to burning large amounts of diesel at its open cycle gas turbines to balance this out. Analysts have noted that this move comes at a significant cost, adding that when the diesel runs out, disaster – like stage 6 load shedding – hits.
The load shedding issues also come despite Eskom’s announcement on Tuesday that another unit at Kusile has been synchronised to the grid, adding a further 800MW to the pile.
All three units are now back in service, providing 2,400MW to the grid.
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.
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