Power utility Eskom says that stage 2 load shedding will continue on Sunday and will be suspended at midnight.
However, it will once again be implemented in the evening peak between 16h00 and 00h00 until Wednesday.
- Sunday, 16 October – Stage 2 until 00h00
- Monday, 17 October – Stage 2 from 16h00 to 00h00
- Tuesday, 18 October – Stage 2 from 16h00 to 00h00
- Wednesday, 19 October – Stage 2 from 16h00 to 00h00
“The load shedding is required to help manage emergency generation reserves during the evenings. Eskom will publish a further update on Wednesday or as soon as any further significant changes occur,” it said.
Since yesterday afternoon, two generation units at Grootvlei as well as a unit each at Kriel and Majuba power stations were returned to service. A generation unit at Lethabo power station was taken offline for repairs.
The group currently has 5,244MW on planned maintenance, while another 15,612MW of capacity is unavailable due to breakdowns.
Load shedding was downgraded to stage 1 on Friday, following stage 2 for most of the week. Load shedding was suspended last weekend for a little over a day before breakdowns forced rolling blackouts to return.
Before being suspended, Eskom was on the longest load shedding streak in history, carrying the schedules over 32 days.
Earlier this week, Eskom chief operating officer Jan Oberholzer said that the country will be dealing with persistent load shedding for at least 18 months before new generating capacity can be added to the grid.
“We need another year or year-and-a-half to get out of this,” Oberholzer said at the Agri SA conference near Johannesburg on Thursday. “We are going to go through a tough time over the next year and a half.”
Schedules
For people living in the major metros, load shedding schedules are available here:
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: Some South Africans get an extra hour of load shedding – here’s why
