By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
After load shedding was suspended over the long weekend, Stage 3 will be implemented until further notice at 20:00 on Sunday night.
In the past 24 hours, three generating units at power stations have failed, Eskom said on Sunday night.
“We have (also) been unable to replenish the pumped storage dam levels sufficiently for the week ahead,” the utility said.
Eskom has resorted to emergency power generation by using pumped-storage hydroelectric plants, which currently do not have enough water reserves.
The power utility had intended on keeping load shedding suspended for the duration of the long weekend, only to return to outages again from Tuesday.
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.
Eskom’s performance has deteriorated significantly after former CEO Andre de Ruyter’s departure and the appointment of Electricity Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa.
On 22 February, Eskom announced that De Ruyter had left the power utility with immediate effect following a special board meeting.
The announcement followed an explosive interview in which De Ruyter exposed widespread crime and corruption at Eskom.
He said there is knowledge and support of corruption at the highest levels of the ruling party and the government.
Soon afterwards, on 6 March 2023, President Cyril Ramaphosa appointed Kgosientsho Ramokgopa as the new Minister in the Presidency for Electricity.
Ramaphosa said Ramokgopa’s primary goal will be to drive the government’s programme to significantly reduce the “severity and frequency of load shedding as a matter of urgency”.
The new electricity minister also had to expedite the government’s work to ensure the full implementation of the Energy Action Plan.
In May, Ramaphosa promised that the end of load-shedding “should be in sight soon”, with its severity reducing in the short term.
In August, he doubled down on his promise, saying the government is doing great work to fix Eskom and the energy crisis and that load-shedding will end by 2024.
It has been six months since Ramokgopa’s appointment and De Ruyter’s departure, making it a suitable period to assess the progress.
There are three core measurements from the data which Eskom provides to assess its performance – the system outlook, load-shedding, and the energy availability factor.
These factors all declined since De Ruyter left the power utility and Ramokgopa was appointed.
It should be noted that Ramokgopa inherited a poorly functioning Eskom, which will take a long time to fix.
The decline in these factors started in 2019 and continued during De Ruyter’s tenure as Eskom’s chief executive.
However, it shows that Ramokgopa has been unable to stem the decline in Eskom’s performance, which was what Ramaphosa promised when he appointed the new electricity minister.