By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
South Africa will suffer Stage 5 load shedding every evening until further notice, state owned power utility Eskom announced.
Stage 4 load shedding will be implemented from 16:00 on Sunday until 05:00 on Monday. Thereafter, Stage 3 will be implemented from 05:00 until 16:00 on Monday, followed by Stage 5 from 16:00 until 05:00 on Tuesday.
This pattern will be repeated daily until further notice. Breakdowns are currently at 16 486MW, while the generating capacity out of service for planned maintenance is 3 817MW.
According to Eskom, over the course of the last 24 hours a generation unit at Duvha Power Station was taken out of service due to a breakdown,
Moreover, the is a delay in returning units to service at Arnot, Camden, Kendal, Tutuka and two generating units at Hendrina power stations continue to add to the current capacity constraints.
Eskom said that it is working tirelessly to ensure that generating units are returned to service as soon as possible.
The utility has further called on the citizens of South Africa to use electricity sparingly between the period of 17:00 to 21:00.
Eskom said that this is planned to continue until further notice, and it will provide an update as soon as there is a significant change.
Coming into the winter months, there is major concern over the increase in electricity demand and the possibility of rolling blackouts reaching higher than stage 6 load shedding.
Analysts, researchers at large as well as the electricity minister have been urging for the implementation of short-term generation capacity.
Speaking at a State of the System briefing on Thursday (18 May), the acting CEO of Eskom, Calib Cassim, said that the risk of stage 8 load shedding this winter is “extremely high” if the group cannot contain unplanned losses.
During stage 6, South Africans suffer outages for 12 hours in a 32-hour cycle. At stage 8, this escalates to 16 hours in a 32-hour cycle.
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.