Understanding your load shedding schedules
Load shedding is implemented equitably to ensure a fair rotation of load shedding to all customers throughout the day.
Many residents are confused by load shedding schedules.
While load shedding stages 1 and 2 are controlled by the municipality, Eksom takes over load shedding at stage 3.
The Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality (EMM) only sheds areas that are supplied by the municipality.
Any areas which rely on electricity supplied by Eskom are encouraged to refer to Eskom’s load shedding schedules for all three stages.
During stages 1 and 2, the EMM does not shed industrial areas.
This also means that areas which fall under industrial use, such as Sebenza, do not appear on the EMM load shedding schedules.
In the event that a non-industrial area does not appear on the EMM schedule, residents are encouraged to inform the municipality as there might be an error on the schedule.
Load shedding is implemented equitably to ensure 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 day when load shedding is implemented.
If a customer was affected on February 1 from 5.30pm to 8.30pm, the next day the customer will be affected in a different time slot.
It is important to note that Eskom only takes control of EMM load shedding at stage 3, according to the advertised schedules.
There are events when Eskom experiences technical challenges with its remote links to restore power, resulting in 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 being followed properly.
How do the different load shedding stages work?
Stage 1 is implemented when Eskom requests for a load shedding range from 10MW to 300MW.
In this stage, areas to be affected are divided into two equal load sizes to accommodate Eskom’s 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 and the other remaining four areas will be affected on day two.
When stage 2 is declared, the EMM schedules are implemented in full.
If there are eight areas in a block to be affected areas, all eight areas will be affected.
When Eskom’s grid is under severe pressure, then stage 3 is implemented.
Stage 3 is completely out of the EMM’s control and is implemented by Eskom to protect the national grid from collapsing and to avoid a blackout.
Due to the sudden and unplanned loss of generation capacity from Eskom, the municipality seldom receives an early notification that stage 3 will be implemented.
On average, EMM receives 10 minutes’ notification that stage 3 will implemented and at times, no notification is received, depending on the emergency of the situation.
