By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
State owned power utility Eskom has announced load shedding will be pushed to stage 2 from 07h00 until 16h00. After that, stage 3 load shedding will be implemented from 16h00 until midnight.
The utility said that it will publish an update during the course of the day.
The sudden change breaks a three-week trend of suspending load shedding during the day and only keeping blackouts to the evening.
Eskom has been implementing stage 1 load shedding during the day over the weekends, but has still managed to suspend outages for at least some periods.
While South Africans, businesses and stakeholders have welcomed the reprieve, energy experts have continued to caution that Eskom’s grid remains volatile and conditions are subject to change at short notice.
Eskom has managed to keep load shedding at lower stages due to increased generation performance, with its energy availability factor (EAF) hitting 60%.
It has also been aided, however, by lower-than-expected demand, and better plant performance thanks to cooler weather. Higher winter tariffs for industrial users have disincentivised excessive use, and a seasonal reduction in planned maintenance have also been big contributors.
While Eskom’s position remains tenuous, and load shedding could escalate on any slight change, the outlook for later this year and into 2024 is more hopeful, with more generating capacity expected to come online.
The utility has been granted environmental exemptions that will allow it to bring several Kusile units back online. These will start returning in November 2022, adding around 2,100MW back to the grid.
New generating capacity is also expected to be connected around the same time as projects start to bear fruit.
or 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.