By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
State owned power utility Eskom says that the return of more generating units and adequate emergency reserves will allow it to ease load shedding on Friday.
Eskom said that load shedding would be dropped to stage 2 from 10h00 on Friday (16 February) and will continue at this level until further notice.
Further changes will be announced if and when it is necessary, it said.
On Monday, Eskom announced a reduction in planned power cuts from stage 5 to stages 3 and 4.
“The return of additional generating units, adequate emergency reserves, and anticipated lower electricity demand necessitate the reduction of load shedding to stage 2 from 10:00 today until further notice,” said Eskom spokesperson Daphne Mokwena.
Load shedding has been gradually eased this week following a sudden return to stage 6 outages last weekend.
Minister in the Presidency for Electricity, Kgosientsho Ramokgopa, said this week that the main cause of the stage 6 load shedding was due to several boiler tube leaks which took out many generating units – while the utility’s higher-than-normal maintenance regime left little room to account for outages.
Ramokgopa said the maintenance is part of a “calculated risk” strategy, where the power utility has to take units offline for repairs – but leaves the grid vulnerable to shocks if other units fail or something else happens to cut supply.
He said that the plan is to gradually reduce maintenance from March, heading into May.
“From March of 2024, we will begin reducing planned maintenance from the current 6,000MW to 5,000MW in April 2024 and to around 3,500MW in May 2024 – a threshold that will be sustained during the winter demand period,” he said.
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.