Eskom announces return of stage 6 load shedding – Here’s your schedule

Eskom has announced the return of stage 6 load shedding due to the loss of generating units overnight.

The deliberate power cuts come amid freezing temperatures sweeping across the country.

Eskom spokesperson Daphne Mokwena said a number of factors have contributed to the higher stages of load shedding

“Due to the loss of additional generating units overnight, the extensive use of Open Gas Cycle Turbines (OGCT) and the inability to replenish pumped storage dam levels, stage 4 load shedding will be implemented at 07:00 this morning until 14:00. 

“Thereafter, stage 6 load shedding will be implemented from 14:00 today until 05:00 on Thursday. This pattern will be repeated daily until further notice,” Mokwena said.

Mokwena added that Eskom will publish an update as soon as any significant changes occur.

Energy Action Plan

Meanwhile, the parastatal tried to maintain the rolling blackouts to stage 4 as winter gripped the country with just a year since the introduction of the Energy Action Plan (EAP).

However, the cold weather has put additional pressure on the electricity grid as people use heating appliances to keep warm.

Last week, Minister of Electricity Kgosientsho Ramokgopa said the EAP was bearing fruit, resulting in lower stages of load shedding.

Ramokgopa said Eskom has introduced open-cycle gas turbines to meet the country’s demand.

Capacity loss

He said Eskom had been able to reduce the capacity loss caused by plant failures to about 15 000 megawatts, which was the best-case scenario forecast in its planning for winter “and we even recorded just below 14 000MW recently as well”.

“We can see that consistently we have been at 15 000MW or less and one of the days, we even recorded just below 14 000MW.”

Ramokgopa said when the president introduced the electricity ministry portfolio, outage slippage – when the utility cannot return out-of-service units on time – accounted for some 2 900MW, which was “almost three stages of load shedding” and was now sitting at 1 351MW, which “we want to improve” further.

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