Power utility Eskom says that it will ease load shedding from stage 6 to stage 5 this week, but rolling blackouts will remain in place all day.<\/p>\n
Load shedding will be reduced to stage 4 from 05h00 on Tuesday (17 January), before escalating to stage 5 in the evenings from 16h00.<\/p>\n
This pattern will repeat daily until further notice.<\/p>\n
Monday, 16 January\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Tuesday, 17 January<\/strong><\/p>\n Wednesday, 18 January<\/strong><\/p>\n [Wednesday pattern repeats until further notice]<\/strong><\/p>\n “Over the course of this week, 14 generators are expected to return to service, helping to ease the pressure on the power system,” the group said. However, it cautioned that a high degree of uncertainty exists on the grid and that these plans will only be possible if everything goes as planned.<\/p>\n “These changes will only be possible in their entirety if the units return to service as planned. Changes in the stages of load shedding can therefore occur at short notice due to the inherent Eskom said that is was able to procure an additional 50 million litres of diesel on 6 January 2023, which is being utilised sparingly to manage the pumped storage dam levels and to limit the amount of load shedding during the day.<\/p>\n “Together, these emergency generators contribute 5.700MW of capacity,” it said.<\/p>\n However, 1,000MW of power from unit 1 of Koeberg remains offline for maintenance work, while 3,000MW is also offline due to critical failures at Medupi and Kusile. These will remain offline until mid 2023 and the end of 2024, respectively.<\/p>\n More recently, a generating unit each at Kendal, Majuba and Tutuka power stations returned to service today, Eskom said.<\/p>\n The group’s summer planned maintenance programme is also continuing and will taper off during the winter months, helping to make more capacity available to produce electricity, it said.<\/p>\n “There are currently 12 generators out on planned maintenance, representing 5,804MW of capacity. Breakdowns currently amount to 16,173MW of generating capacity,” it said.<\/p>\n President Cyril Ramaphosa has been meeting with stakeholders in the energy sector over the extended period of stage 6 load shedding, seeking an end to the crisis.<\/p>\n South Africans at large have been venting their frustrations over the outages, with some attempting to mobilise and take the protest against load shedding and coming electricity price hikes to the streets.<\/p>\n South Africa is expected to suffer through extended periods of load shedding for the foreseeable future, with analysts and economists warning that there is no end in sight for the country’s power crisis.<\/p>\n Schedules\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n For people living in the major metros, load shedding schedules are available here:<\/p>\n For access to other load shedding schedules, Eskom has made them available on\u00a0loadshedding.eskom.co.za.<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n\n
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\nunreliability of the coal power station fleet,” it said.<\/p>\n\n
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