By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
State owned power utility Eskom says that load shedding will be eased slightly for the weekend, moving down to stage 2 and stage 3 until Monday.
Load shedding will continue at stage 3 until 16h00 on Friday (10 February) and will move up to stage 4 as previously planned.
It will then be downgraded to stage 3 until Sunday when it will move to stage 2.
Stage 3 and stage 4 load shedding will be implemented on Monday (13 February).
Over the past 24 hours, two generating units at Arnot, a unit each at Duvha, Kriel and Medupi power stations, were taken offline for repairs, Eskom said.
A generating unit each at Kriel and Tutuka power stations returned to service during the period.
By now it has been drilled into South Africans that the country will continue to experience rolling blackouts for at least the next two years as Eskom struggles to restore capacity to its grid.
The situation has now hit official disaster levels, with President Cyril Ramaphosa declaring a national state of disaster over the blackouts during his State of the Nation Address on Thursday night.
The president said that reducing load shedding in the short term and eliminating it completely over the long term is now a singular focus of the government. He is introducing a new ministry position withing the presidency in the coming weeks, which will give its full attention to the crisis.
Meanwhile, short term mitigation plans include the strengthening of Eskom’s best-performing units, procuring additional capacity from private producers and neighbouring countries, as well as rolling out incentives for rooftop solar.
Ramaphosa said National Treasury will also ensure that Eskom has enough cash to keep buying diesel to keep its Open Cycle Gast Turbines going.
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.
Meanwhile air pollution from coal-fired power plants run by Eskom risks killing 79 500 people from 2025 until they are due to be shut, according to a study submitted to a government-appointed panel.
The research by the Finland-based Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air assumes that the utility will continue to operate its plants as it does currently, with many of them breaching South African emission standards.
The study was cited on Wednesday by the Centre for Environmental Rights, a legal organisation representing environmental activist organisations in its submission to a panel on air pollution.