Load shedding stage 4 to start at 9am

Stage 4 load shedding is set to start from 9am on Wednesday morning, power utility Eskom confirmed in a brief statement.

The country had been experiencing rolling blackouts due to diminished generation capacity for the better part of this week.

Stage 4 until Monday

Eskom said the news of further overnight breakdowns was a “disappointment”, but that stage 4 had to continue until 5am on Friday morning.

From Friday, load shedding will move to stage 2, until 5am on Monday morning.

“Eskom would like to apologise for the implementation of load shedding, and will continuously review the situation and act appropriately as circumstances change.”

Overnight breakdowns

Eskom reported one unit each tripping at Kendal, Duvha, Camden and Kusile power stations overnight.

Only four of these units have been returned to service, but still need to be ramped up to full output. This will require a “high usage of emergency generation reserves”.

“This being the fourth day of extremely high diesel usage, the emergency reserves are being depleted faster than can be replenished,” the utility explained.

Total breakdowns are currently at 15 439MW. Planned maintenance is at 5 505MW of capacity.

Eskom implemented stage 2 load shedding on Monday “due to multiple unit failures”.

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