BREAKING NEWS: Stage 2 load shedding alert

eTHEKWINI Municipality has been advised by power utility, Eskom that the country is currently load shedding in Stage 2 due to high demand.

eThekwini’s load shedding schedules are drawn up in accordance with the national guideline document (NRS 048-9) with specific consideration to technical constraints, practicality and sensitivity to local economic impact.

The schedule comprises of Stage 1, Stage 2 and Stage 3 emergencies.
Stage 1 is largely residential and commercial load, Stage 2 includes Stage 1 and industrial load, and Stage 3 which includes the entire area of Durban with the exclusion of strategic national resources.

All affected blocks are scheduled for a two-hour outage with an additional half hour contingency to cater for switching on. Customers are only scheduled to go off once a day under Stages 1 and 2 and twice daily should a Stage 3 emergency be declared.
The load-shedding schedule is a guideline to determine which block a customer is in and should be accurate under normal operating conditions.

However, each customer can be fed from multiple substations, some of which could be in different blocks. Under fault or high load conditions, customers can be fed from alternative neighbouring substations, some of which may be in other blocks.
It is extremely difficult to report on this dynamic change in network configuration timeously and we appeal to our customers to be patient if this situation does occur.

Every effort will be made to follow the schedule but it must be recognised that we may incur technical difficulties in restoring the load and should a customer remain off for a substantial amount of time after the block has been scheduled to be restored, then that incident must be treated as a fault and reported accordingly.
We continue to urge residents and businesses to implement electricity saving measures at all times to help reduce constraints on the power system.

The municipality will provide regular updates on the status of the power system.
If you are experiencing a power outage, either outside your schedule time or when load shedding is not active, then it is a result of a fault on the network and not because of load shedding. Report your outage to the electricity call centre on 080-13-13-1111.