Load shedding schedule explained

The municipality does not shed industrial areas during stage one and stage two, hence areas falling under an industrial area do not appear on the EMM schedule.

In the event that a non-residential area does not appear on the EMM schedule, residents are encouraged to inform the municipality as there might be an error on the schedule.

An investigation will be carried through and the areas that are supplied by the municipality will be included on the EMM load schedule.

Load shedding is implemented equitably to ensure that there is a fair rotation of load shedding to all customers throughout the day.

This is done to avoid customers from being affected at the same time of the days when load shedding is implemented.

If a customer was affected on February 1, between 5.30pm and 8.30pm, the next day the customer will be affected on a different time slot.

It is important to note that Eskom takes control of EMM load shedding only at stage three, according to the advertised schedules.

There are events when Eskom experiences technical challenges with restoring power to their remote links, resulting in their technicians having to manually restore power at substations.

This, unfortunately, results in restoration time taking much longer than expected and residents complaining that the load shedding schedule is not properly followed.

n How do the different load shedding stages work?

Stage one is implemented when Eskom requests load shedding ranging from 10MW to 300MW.

In this stage areas to be affected are divided into two equal load sizes, to accommodate Eskom load reduction needs.

If the EMM schedule has eight areas in a block to be affected, only four of the eight areas may be affected on day one, while the other remaining four areas will be affected on day two.

When stage two is declared, the EMM schedules are implemented in full.

If there are eight areas in a block to be affected, all eight areas will be affected.

When Eskom’s grid is under severe pressure, stage three is implemented.

Stage three is completely out of the municipality’s control and is implemented by Eskom, to protect the national grid from collapsing and avoid a blackout.

Due to the sudden and unplanned loss of generation capacity from Eskom, the municipality seldom receives an early notification that stage three will be implemented.

On average, the EMM receives 10 minutes notification that stage three will be implemented and, at times, no notification is received, depending on the emergency of the situation.