Stage 2 load shedding is back

Power utility Eskom announced that stage 2 load shedding has returned following the loss of 5 generating units on Wednesday evening.

“While we have made notable progress in our generation recovery efforts, Eskom faced the loss of five generation units before the peak period,” it said.

Consequently, Stage 2 load shedding was implemented at 18h25 and will remain in effect until 05h00 on Thursday (20 March).

“We continue to prioritise planned maintenance to strengthen system reliability ahead of the winter months while ensuring adherence to environmental and licensing conditions”.

In light of the ongoing system constraints, Eskom urged the public to use electricity sparingly.

The latest round of rotating power cuts marks yet another setback for Eskom, which was forced to implement stage 4 and stage 6 load shedding in February and stage 3 load shedding in early March.

While Eskom has significantly reduced load shedding and managed to keep it at bay for almost a full year, a series of unit failures has seen outages return in 2025.

The last round of outages was caused by 10 units going offline. Other persistent issues include Eskom using up its emergency reserves and struggling to get units back online in time after planned maintenance.

Eskom and the energy department have apologised for the return of load shedding but have reminded the country that the grid is still under pressure and operates on a fine edge.

Any setbacks, such as the sudden loss of units, increase the chance that load shedding will return,

This is unlikely to change until the grid’s capacity is boosted to cover growing demand.

A recent study by the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research showed that the outages have cost the country dearly, even when reduced.

The economy forfeited R481 billion in output due to load shedding, down from as much as R2.9 trillion rand in 2023 when there were record blackouts, according to the report released Monday.