South Africans Face Stage 3 and 4 Loadshedding Until Thursday, Says Eskom

Stage 3 loadshedding will continue to be implemented at 00:00 – 16:00 daily until Thursday; while Stage 4 loadshedding will be implemented daily during the evening peaks between 16:00 and 00:00, Eskom said in a statement on Sunday afternoon.

The power utility said it will issue a further update on Wednesday afternoon, or as soon as there are any significant changes.

“Eskom is still experiencing constraints from its diesel suppliers that is affecting the availability of bulk diesel to the Ankerlig and Gourikwa Open Cycle Gas Turbines, which have a combined capacity of 2 000MW. While we expect diesel deliveries from Tuesday onwards, should this uncertainty of supply persist, higher stages of loadshedding may be required.

“While some generation units are anticipated to return to service, it is necessary to continue the loadshedding to conserve emergency generation reserves,” said Eskom.

Since Friday a generation unit each at Camden and Kriel power stations were taken offline for repairs.

Another generating unit each at Kriel and Kusile power stations were returned to service.

Eskom apologised for the continued and “unfortunate” loadshedding – which has seen South Africans plunged into Stage 6 loadshedding last week, and prompted President Cyril Ramaphosa to cut short his overseas trip to deal with the electricity crisis at home.

Eskom said again that it only implements loadsheddin as a last resort in view of the shortage of generation capacity and the need to attend to breakdowns.

“We currently have 5 897MW on planned maintenance, while another 16 739MW of capacity is unavailable due to breakdowns,” said the state-owned entity.