By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
State owned power utility Eskom announced that Stage 6 load shedding will be reduced to Stage 5 load shedding at 05:00 on Monday.
Thereafter, Stage 4 load shedding will be implemented at 05h00 on Tuesday for the remainder of the week, the group said.
Eskom will publish a further update as soon as there are any significant changes.
Sunday, 18 December
- Stage 6: until 00h00
Monday, 19 December
- Stage 6: 00h00 to 05h00
- Stage 5: 05h00 to 00h00
Tuesday, 20 December
- Stage 5: 00h00 to 05h00
- Stage 4: 05h00 until further notice
The move to lower stages follows the confirmation that the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) has been deployed to four power stations.
Eskom confirmed on Saturday evening (17 December) that SANDF forces have been deployed to Majuba, Camden Grootvlei and Tutuka to assist with keeping criminals at bay. Eskom’s fleet has been subject to high levels of crime and have fallen prey to criminal syndicates stealing coal and diesel and sabotaging systems.
South Africa is likely to sit with prolonged levels of load shedding for the foreseeable future. Last Saturday (10 December) 1,000MW was removed from the grid through Koeberg unit 1 being taken offline, and approximately 3,000MW is offline from various breakdowns at Kusile and Medupi.
According to Eskom’s outlook for the next year, it needs to keep breakdowns below 13,000MW to stave off the worst of load shedding, but the utility has struggled to keep outages below 16,000MW – the worst-case scenario in its plans.
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 the massive increase in the consumption of diesel by Eskom, the lack of fuel storage and refineries in operation, and the fact that South Africa imports almost all of its fuel are the cause for concern.
Feedback from industry indicated that diesel supplies are under pressure.
Eskom, over the past nine months, has bought 37% more diesel to keep its open-cycle gas turbines running (OCGT) than it did in the corresponding period of the previous financial year – purchasing around 722 million litres of diesel in Q3 of 2022 compared to 526.3 million litres in 2021, according to the City Press.
The company’s OCGTs are meant to be run only during peak energy demand periods when the regular coal stations cannot handle the surplus.
This rampant increase in diesel usage led to Eskom announcing that it had run out of diesel in November 2022.
The situation is exacerbated by the many closed refineries in the country. Only Sasol’s refineries are currently operating.
South Africa has also struggled with inadequate infrastructure for storing and distributing diesel. There have been shortages at fuel stations due to a lack of storage capacity and problems with the distribution network, including damaged pipelines and bottlenecks at ports over the last few months.