By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
State owned power utility has announced that Stage 4 load shedding will continue to be implemented until 05:00 on Saturday. Thereafter, various stages of load shedding will be implemented until 05:00 on Monday.
Sunday’s pattern will be similar, moving down to stage 2 during the day and then back to stage 4 as the new week begins.
Notably, the country will be at stage 4 load shedding during the anticipated South Africa vs Argentina rugby match on Saturday.
The group said that it is still struggling to contain breakdowns and keep outages below 15,000MW.
Breakdowns have reduced to 16,686MW of generating capacity while the generating capacity out of
service for planned maintenance is 3,966MW.
Over the past 24 hours, a generating unit at Camden, Duvha and two generating units at Kendal power stations were returned to service.
In the same period, a generating unit at Medupi and two generating units at Kriel power stations were taken offline for repairs.
The delay in returning to service a generating unit at Kendal, Majuba and two generating units at Tutuka
power stations is contributing to the current capacity constraints.
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.
Meanwhile Eskom says that it has handed back control over load shedding to the City of Ekurhuleni after taking over the operations earlier this week.
The group previously announced that it would take control of implementing load shedding in the city after it failed to do so according to the necessary regulations.
However, in a U-turn on the decision on Friday (28 July), Eskom said it would now hand back the controls to the city after the municipality promised to do it properly.
“Eskom has handed over load shedding operations back to the City of Ekurhuleni, after the municipality committed to implement load shedding as per the NRS 048-9:2019 code of practice,” Eskom said.
“The municipality has assured Eskom that it has put controls in place to address the challenges that prevented it from adhering to the regulations, which requires the distributor licence holders to reduce load during the declaration of a system emergency.”
Eskom said it will continue to monitor the city and other municipalities to ensure that they implement load shedding accordingly.