By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
Eskom has announced that load shedding will be dropping to Stage 3 from 21:00 on Thursday night, and will continue until 05:00 on Friday morning.
“Thereafter Stage 2 load shedding will be implemented as previously communicated, until 05:00 on Saturday morning,” the power utility announced.
A unit each at Medupi, Koeberg, Kriel, Kusile and Tutuka power stations were returned to service.
However, at the same time, a unit at Majuba and Arnot stations tripped, and a unit at Matla was forced to shut down.
This followed Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan saying in his briefing on Wednesday night it was likely that South Africa would drop to Stage 3 load shedding overnight. This, however, did not happened until the Thursday night announcement by Eskom.
Gordhan said on Wednesday night that “as a result of extensive discussions, is that the following is likely to happen over the next few days”.
“The first is that overnight, some 2 000 MW of power will be returned to operations, and as a result it is expected that the system will be downgraded from a Level 4 load shedding, to Level 3 load shedding.”
Eskom said load shedding is a last resort and apologised for the inconvenience caused.
For people living in the major metros, load shedding schedules are available here:
- City of Johannesburg
- City of Ekurhuleni
- City of Tshwane
- City of Cape Town (PDF)
- Nelson Mandela Bay
- eThekwini
- Manguang
- Buffalo City
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.