Confused about the current load shedding stage? Here’s where we are at

It’s confusing, we know. It’s been a three-week-long rollercoaster, with Eskom taking us from stage 2 load shedding to stage 4 and back again.

Here are the most recent load shedding updates.

Load shedding in South Africa

On-and-off power cuts

Eskom first implemented stage 2 load shedding on 7 October in order to replenish emergency generation reserves, and soon the extensions began.

We had a short reprieve on 13 October, however, Eskom warned significant risks to the system remain and load shedding could again be implemented at short notice.

Eskom then announced stage 2 load shedding would be implemented again from 23 October due to another shortage of generation capacity.

It started at 9pm on Saturday and would continue until 5am on Monday. That’s also when the City of Joburg versus Eskom drama began.

City Power legal battle

City Power rejected Eskom’s outage schedule and said it was willing to go the legal route to halt what it referred to as “blanket heavy-handedness.”

It’s been a wild ride since then, with Eskom essentially rewording their initial power alerts just to inform us that yes, load shedding will indeed be extended again.

And again and again and again. The embattled power utility then implemented Stage 4 load shedding on 27 October.

This brings us to the here and now.

You are now here

Eskom on Thursday evening, 29 October said it would reduce load shedding from Stage 4 to Stage 3, before reducing it to Stage 2.

So where exactly are we now? Glad you asked.

Stage 3 was implemented from 9pm last night. However, Eskom reduced it once again from Stage 3 to Stage 2 at 5am on Friday (today) morning.

Stage 2 will be in place until Saturday morning at 5am. Eskom said there was “low probability of a system collapse” at this stage.

Will there be power outages over the weekend?

Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan said power cuts should be over by the weekend. But don’t get your hopes up.

Even though Eskom was able to restore some generation capacity, there’s still ample time for the grid to go bonkers again between now and 5am on Saturday.