By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
State owned power utility Eskom on Monday has announced that load shedding will be increased to Stage 5 during the night in order to replenish pumped storage dam levels overnight and to maintain sufficient emergency generation reserves.
Stage 5 load shedding will be implemented on Monday from 22:00 until 05:00 on Tuesday. Thereafter, Stage 4 load shedding will continue to be implemented as previously communicated from 05:00 on Tuesday until further notice.
The country has been warned that load shedding is likely to be intensified over the near-term as the utility pushes to get more megawatts online by the end of the year.
During a press briefing on Sunday, electricity minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa attributed the recent escalation in load shedding to a trifecta of issues: demand remains high and often unpredictable; Eskom has suffered several outages; and planned maintenance has ramped up following the winter cut.
While the minister expressed confidence that the electricity situation will improve heading into the last quarter of the year – as the Kusile Power Station will be adding much-needed capacity to the grid, providing a buffer for increased maintenance elsewhere – he did warn that the situation is likely to remain volatile until then.
The minister said that while planned maintenance is being ramped up, any unplanned outages or delays in getting units back online would mean that load shedding would have to be intensified.
“If (planned maintenance) coincides with a number of units failing on their own, then you are exposed. And the only option available to us is intensified load shedding,” he said.
He stressed that the government and Eskom would not compromise on the ramping up planned maintenance.
“It is a calculated risk. We are going to do this the right way; we are going to fix these units. It’s a short-term pain for long-term gain,” he said.
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.