Eskom Announces Stage 2 and Stage 3 Loadshedding for Week Ahead

Due to a continued loss of generating capacity, Stage 2 and Stage 3 loadshedding are to be implemented from Sunday evening across South Africa, Eskom announced in a statement on Sunday morning.

Stage 2 loadshedding will be implemented from 17:00 – 22:00 tonight (Sunday 15 May), and Stage 3 will be implemented on Monday and Tuesday evening at the same times.

After that, loadshedding (which is just another word for power cuts) will be reduced to Stage 2 for the rest of the week, with Eskom monitoring and adjusting should any changes be necessary.

Loadshedding is yet again becoming a frustrating part of life for South Africans who were reminded how abnormal it is by DA Leader John Steenhuisen last week on his return from Kyiv in Ukraine, a country under siege from Russia, where Steenhuisen said “there was certainly no load-shedding or water outages when I was there”.

Since yesterday evening, Eskom says breakdowns occurred on a unit each at Tutuka, Camden (pictured above) and Majuba power stations.

”A generating unit each at Hendrina and Majuba power stations returned to service today,” said Eskom. “We currently have 2,094MW on planned maintenance, while another 17,640MW of capacity is unavailable due to breakdowns.”

As usual, the power utility appealed to all South Africans to help limit the impact of loadshedding by reducing the usage of electricity and to switch off all non-essential items.

“Eskom would like to remind the public that loadshedding is implemented only as a last resort to protect the national grid. We therefore urge all South Africans to continue using electricity sparingly especially between 05:00 – 09:00 in the mornings and 16:00 – 22:00 in the evenings,” said the beleaguered state owned entity.