{"id":715602,"date":"2023-09-02T21:04:44","date_gmt":"2023-09-02T19:04:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=715602"},"modified":"2023-09-02T21:04:44","modified_gmt":"2023-09-02T19:04:44","slug":"stage-4-load-shedding-extended-as-even-more-eskom-units-go-down","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/energy\/715602\/stage-4-load-shedding-extended-as-even-more-eskom-units-go-down\/","title":{"rendered":"Stage 4 load shedding extended as even more Eskom units go down"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Power utility Eskom says that stage 4 load shedding will be extended following the loss of four more generating units on Saturday (2 September).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Stage 4 load shedding will now be extended to 16h00 on Sunday &#8211; 11 hours longer than the 05h00 switch to stage 2 announced on Friday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A further announcement on load shedding for the week ahead is expected in the afternoon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Saturday, 2 September<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Stage 4: until 00h00<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Sunday 3, September<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Stage 4: 00h00 to 16h00<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>The escalation of load shedding this week breaks a period of relative stability for power supply where Eskom was able to keep outages at low levels, even suspending them on some days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The group has also&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/energy\/713394\/good-news-for-load-shedding-in-south-africa\/\"><strong>been quite positive and optimistic<\/strong><\/a>&nbsp;about its overall performance, noting improvements, while also anticipating improved capacity heading into the latter months of the year and forward to 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>However, despite these small improvements \u2013 and a much better-than-expected energy situation in winter \u2013 economists at Nedbank say<strong>&nbsp;the \u2018good times\u2019 may be coming to an end<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In a note on Thursday, the bank said that while the country has seen some positive developments regarding load shedding, the underlying conditions at Eskom have not improved much.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Electricity Minister Kgosientsho\u00a0Ramokopga said earlier on Saturday that increased planned maintenance has intensified load shedding in South Africa, with further outages possibly on the way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>During Winter, Eskom cut its planned maintenance substantially, which it usually does due to the increase in demand following colder temperatures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This was one reason that Eskom could keep load shedding at lower-than-expected levels in winter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the last week, however, Eskom has upped load shedding to stage 4 following a regular daily rotation of stage 1 and 3 load shedding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Ramokopga said that this was due to planned maintenance increasing from roughly 2,500 MW in May to about 6,500 MW in the last week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Although the Minister acknowledged that the increase in maintenance will intensify load shedding, he said that it is paramount that generation units that need maintenance be taken offline.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWe don\u2019t foresee these being long outages, and that\u2019s why we choose to take them out,\u201d the minister added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cAnd we\u2019ll continue to&nbsp;<strong>ramp up at this scale or even a bit higher in relation to planned outages<\/strong>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Read: <a href=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/energy\/715582\/this-is-why-south-africa-is-in-stage-4-load-shedding-and-why-it-could-get-worse\/\">This is why South Africa is in stage 4 load shedding \u2013 and why it could get worse<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Stage 4 load shedding will be sticking around for longer than planned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":681069,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9874],"tags":[1164,26],"class_list":["post-715602","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-energy","tag-eskom","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/715602","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=715602"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/715602\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":715604,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/715602\/revisions\/715604"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/681069"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=715602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=715602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=715602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}