Embattled power utility Eskom announced that it will reduce load shedding from stage 5 to stage 4 from Thursday morning at 05:00.
Stage 4 will run from Thursday until 05:00 on Sunday morning. From there, stage 3 load shedding will be implemented on Sunday.
Eskom spokesperson, Sikonathi Mantshantsha, said that since Tuesday morning, A unit each at Camden, Kriel, Majuba, Matla and Duvha power stations were taken offline for repairs and planned maintenance.
“In addition, the delay in returning to service a generating unit each at Arnot, Duvha and Hendrina power stations has contributed to the capacity constraints,” Mantshantsha said.
“A generating unit each at Grootvlei, Camden, Kriel and Majuba power stations have returned to service,” he said.
Mantshantsha said Eskom has 6,618MW of capacity on scheduled maintenance, while another 15,996MW is unavailable due to breakdowns.
“Eskom requests the public to reduce the usage of electricity and to exercise patience and tolerance during this difficult period,” he said.
He further said that load shedding was only implemented as a last resort in view of the shortage of generation capacity and the need to attend to breakdowns.
Eskom will publish a further update as soon as there are significant changes.
South Africa is currently on day 44 of a recorded-long load shedding streak.
The reduction in load shedding comes after a week of intensive rotational power cuts.
Lat Wednesday, 7 December 2022, Eskom escalated load shedding to stage 4 at short notice after informing the public that it hoped to reduce power cuts to a constant stage 2.
However, a few hours after announcing stage 4, the power utility said it had to increase load shedding further to stage 6.
It also said load shedding would drop to stage 5 by Friday.
On Friday, it announced plans to further reduce load shedding over the weekend, going down to stage 2 by Sunday.
However, by Saturday morning, Eskom had to scrap that plan and announced stage 5 load shedding “until further notice”.
Source: My Broadband, IOL, Engineering News, image from Twitter: @MBAdvertiser