By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
Stage 2 load shedding was implemented at 18:25 on Wednesday evening, and will remain in effect until 05:00 on Thursday morning, Eskom said in a brief statement.
Eskom was hit by the loss of five generation units before the peak power use period on Wednesday night.
“In light of the ongoing system constraints, we urge the public to use electricity sparingly,” Eskom said.
The latest round of rotating power cuts marks yet another setback for Eskom, which was forced to implement stage 4 and stage 6 load shedding in February and stage 3 load shedding in early March.
While Eskom has significantly reduced load shedding and managed to keep it at bay for almost a full year, a series of unit failures has seen outages return in 2025.
The last round of outages was caused by 10 units going offline. Other persistent issues include Eskom using up its emergency reserves and struggling to get units back online in time after planned maintenance.
Eskom and the energy department have apologised for the return of load shedding but have reminded the country that the grid is still under pressure and operates on a fine edge.
Any setbacks, such as the sudden loss of units, increase the chance that load shedding will return,
This is unlikely to change until the grid’s capacity is boosted to cover growing demand.
A recent study by the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research showed that the outages have cost the country dearly, even when reduced.
The economy forfeited R481 billion in output due to load shedding, down from as much as R2.9 trillion rand in 2023 when there were record blackouts, according to the report released Monday.
Meanwhile Eskom is going to implement NERSA-approved Financial Year 2026 tariffs.
The tariffs for Eskom direct customers will increase by 12.74% effective on 1 April 2025 and tariffs for municipal bulk purchases will increase by 11.32% effective on 1 July 2025.
The updated tariffs will support the transformation of the electricity supply industry by aligning prices with NERSA-approved costs for generation, transmission (for the National Transmission Company South Africa (NTCSA)), and distribution services whilst promoting affordability and equity for all customers, said Eskom.