By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
Stage 4 load shedding will be implemented until 05:00 on Saturday morning, after which it will be reduced to Stage 3, Eskom said on Friday.
The utility hopes to downgrade load shedding to stage 2 on Sunday during the day, but stage 4 will continue in the evenings.
A further update will be published on Sunday afternoon or as soon as any significant changes occur, it said.
Friday, 27 January
- Stage 4: until 00h00
Saturday, 28 January
- Stage 4: 00h00 to 05h00
- Stage 3: 05h00 to 16h00
- Stage 4: 16h00 to 00h00
Sunday, 29 January
- Stage 4: 00h00 to 05h00
- Stage 2: 05h00 to 16h00
- Stage 4: 16h00 to 00h00
Monday, 30 January
- Stage 4: 00h00 to 05h00
- TBD: 05h00 to 16h00
Since Thursday, a generating unit each at Camden, Duvha and Tutuka power stations have returned to service while the return of a generating unit at Matla Power Station has been delayed.
A generating unit each at Duvha, Grootvlei and three units at Kriel power stations have suffered breakdowns.
Planned maintenance is currently sitting at 6,482MW while breakdowns currently amount to 15,848MW of generating capacity, the group said.
Eskom is struggling with a highly volatile and unpredictable grid, which has resulted in several changes and escalations to the load shedding schedule this week. South Africans should expect the load shedding stages to fluctuate at short notice for the foreseeable future.
ANC secretary general Fikile Mbalula on Friday announced that president Cyril Ramaphosa and the national government were working on an “emergency package” of measures to mitigate load shedding – details of which are expected to be revealed in the coming week.
Parliament, meanwhile, has ramped up its oversight of Eskom and its board, engaging with the executive and labour over the last two days trying to understand the reason for the prolonged and elevated stages of blackouts.
The matter is complex. According to CEO Andre de Ruyter the utility has been hit by the perfect storm of issues.
On top of the well-reported challenges to the group’s coal fleet, the power utility has had to address the refurbishments and upgrades of the Koeberg Nuclear Power Stations, critical failures at Kusile and Medupi, as well as the lack of liquidity and constrained finances at the company that prevent it from operating things like the open-cycle gas turbines (OCGTs).
De Ruyter stated unequivocally that “if (Eskom) had more money for the OCGTs, the stages of load shedding would be reduced”.
Despite the ongoing challenges, the CEO hinted that there was light at the end of the tunnel.
He said that the current recovery plan foresees 1,862 megawatts being restored to the grid by the end of March 2023 – roughly the equivalent of two stages of load shedding. 6,000MW of capacity should be coming online over the next 24 months.
Meanwhile Eskom has “neither plans nor decision to retrench any employees, whatever their gender or race”, the power utility said on Friday.
This follows claims by trade union solidarity that the state-owned power company “wants to get rid of another 500 white maintenance staff”.
According to Solidarity, this was part of Eskom’s latest Employment Equity plan for 2023-2025. Solidarity added that it had issued a legal letter to Eskom calling for a halt to race-based appointments at the utility while the country was in the grip of an ongoing power crisis.
Eskom says the document in question was for internal discussion and there were no retrenchment plans in place.
It says, on the contrary, it wants to bolster skills to tackle the power crisis.
But Solidarity was not convinced. “We do not see in the plan that Eskom is making plans to address its skills challenges. This plan is all about skin colour at the various job levels,” Solidarity chief executive Dirk Hermann had said on Thursday, adding that “these race targets” were “absurd”.
Hermann said competent white candidates would be discouraged from applying for jobs to help solve the power crisis.