South Africa’s power cuts to alternate between Stage 4 and 5

Eskom says it expects to implement Stage 4 and 5 load shedding (electricity power cuts) until further notice, as a result of further breakdowns and delays in return to service of some generating units at power stations.

Stage 4 began at 4pm today (Tuesday) and will continue until 4pm on Wednesday.

Stage 5 loadshedding will then be implemented from 4pm until 5am on Thursday, before Stage 4 kicks in again at 5am on Thursday until 4pm that afternoon. And then it’s Stage 5 again. You get the picture!

Eskom said: “This pattern will continue until further notice. Eskom will publish another update as soon as any significant changes occur.”

Apparently there have been breakdowns of a unit each at Duvha, Lethabo, Majuba and Tutuka power stations which caused units to be taken offline for repairs.

“The delay in returning to service a unit each at Arnot, Camden, Duvha and Kendal power stations are contributing to the current capacity constraints,” Eskom said.

The power utility said over the past 24 hours, at least four other generating units were returned to service.

However, by Tuesday afternoon, breakdowns caused the unavailability of some 19 031MW of energy with a further 4174MW on maintenance outages.

Sources: Eskom and SAnews.gov.za