By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
State owned power utility Eskom has announced that load shedding will be pushed to stage 3 on Tuesday (27 December), alternating between stage 2 and stage 3 until further notice.
Stage 3 load shedding will be implemented from 16h00 until 05h00, and stage 2 load shedding will be implemented from 05h00 until 16h00 – this pattern will repeat until the end of the week – when another update is expected – or until further notice.
The schedule looks like this:
Tuesday, 27 December
- Stage 1: until 16h00
- Stage 3: 16h00 to 00h00
Wednesday, 28 December
- Stage 3: 00h00 to 05h00
- Stage 2: 05h00 to 16h00
- Stage 3: 16h00 to 00h00
Thursday, 29 December
- Stage 3: 00h00 to 05h00
- Stage 2: 05h00 to 16h00
- Stage 3: 16h00 to 00h00
Friday, 30 December
- Stage 3: 00h00 to 05h00
- Stage 2: 05h00 to 16h00
- Stage 3: 16h00 to 00h00
The escalation follows a Christmas Day where load shedding was suspended. However, this was just a special measure by Eskom, and the grid remains under severe pressure.
South Africa is likely to sit with prolonged levels of load shedding for the foreseeable future. On Saturday (10 December) 1,000MW was removed from the grid through Koeberg unit 1 being taken offline, and approximately 3,000MW is offline from various breakdowns at Kusile and Medupi.
According to Eskom’s outlook for the next year, it needs to keep breakdowns below 13,000MW to stave off the worst of load shedding, but the utility has struggled to keep outages below 16,000MW – the worst-case scenario in its plans.
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.