By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
State owned power utility Eskom has announced that load shedding will be pushed to stage 4 on Sunday afternoon – with more load shedding planned for the entire week.
Load shedding will be at stage 4 from 12h00 on Sunday to 05h00 on Monday (24 October), and will continue at various stages for the rest of the week.
Here’s the schedule:
Sunday, 23 October
- Stage 4 – 12h00 to 00h00
Monday, 24 October
- Stage 4 – 00h00 to 05h00
- Stage 3 – 05h00 to 16h00
- Stage 4 – 16h00 to 00h00
Tuesday, 25 October
- Stage 4 – 00h00 to 05h00
- Stage 3 – 05h00 to 16h00
- Stage 4 – 16h00 to 00h00
Wednesday, 26 October
- Stage 4 – 00h00 to 05h00
- Stage 3 – 05h00 to 16h00
- Stage 4 – 16h00 to 00h00
Thursday, 27 October (provisional)
- Stage 4 – 00h00 to 05h00
- Stage 3 – 05h00 to 00h00
Friday, 28 October (provisional)
- Stage 3 – 00h00 to 05h00
- Stage 2 – 00h500 to 00h00
The schedules for Thursday and Friday are provisional and a better picture will be presented later in the week.
Eskom said that its emergency generation reserves are almost depleted – both the diesel and pumped storage dam levels.
“The higher load shedding stages are required to help build up the emergency generation reserves during the week,” it said.
During the weekend, the breakdown of a generating unit each at Duvha, Kriel and Medupi power stations, as well as the delayed returns of a generating unit each at Camden, Kusile, Komati, and Kendal power stations have exacerbated current generation capacity shortages, forcing the escalation of load shedding.
Eskom teams have returned a generating unit each at Grootvlei, Hendrina, Majuba, Matla and Tutuka power stations to service.
The group currently has 6,004MW on planned maintenance, while another 14,961MW of capacity is unavailable due to breakdowns.
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 South African households that get their power supply from municipalities should stop seeing unfair price hikes in the future after the High Court ruled that energy regulator Nersa’s methodologies for calculating increases were illegal and invalid.
The court has given Nersa 12 months to correct its methodologies.
Nersa has landed in hot water over its methodologies in the past, mainly related to Eskom’s tariffs.
The national power utility applies every year to the regulator for massive price increases, only to be limited to single-digit hikes. Eskom has argued that its tariffs are not reflective of the cost to produce electricity, and Nersa’s limitations are creating a ‘backlog’ of hikes – a bubble that is about to burst.
Eskom has applied for a 32% tariff hike in 2023, which, when added to court-ordered backlogs, could see prices climb by over 38%.
This proposed tariff hike has been rejected by major metropolitan municipalities, civil action groups and even Nersa insiders, who say that consumers cannot afford the hike and should not be the ones to suffer for Eskom’s inefficiencies.