Johnathan Paoli
Electricity Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa said despite some areas experiencing intense load shedding over the last week, and rumours of a possible Stage 8, the country was scheduled to experience a reduction to Stage 4.
Ramokgopa was briefing the media in Pretoria on the state of the power grid on Sunday, following recent power cuts and the implementation of Stage 6 load shedding, with some residents complaining of experiencing prolonged load shedding of up to 12 hours a day, with hours that extend beyond those set for the stage.
“I want to repeat on record, we were never at Stage 8; we were on Stage 6. If there is any major challenge, I will be the first to call a press conference and share with you in the same manner we have done previously,” Ramokgopa said.
The Electricity Minister said Unit 2 and Unit 5 at Kusile was expected to return to service, and that consequently the unplanned capacity loss factor would decrease below 14000 megawatts, resulting in significantly lower stages of load shedding.
Unplanned outages are currently at 15 386 MW of generating capacity, while the capacity out of service for planned maintenance is 5 617MW.
Approximately 2 500MW of generating capacity is anticipated to return to service by Tuesday evening.
Loadshedding is expected to be reduced to Stage 4 from 12:00 midday on Sunday until 05:00 on Monday. Thereafter, Stage 3 load shedding will be implemented from 05:00 until 16:00 on Monday, followed by Stage 4 load shedding from 16:00 until 05:00 on Tuesday.
Following the recent week-long phase of Stage ^ load shedding, Eskom has said breakdowns of its generating units have decreased allowing for the utility to downgrade the rolling power cuts to Stage 4.
In addition, City Power has said that it was implementing load shedding at two-hour intervals throughout the metro, instead of implementing 4-hour bouts of load shedding when it’s Stage 6.
The utility took over the implementation of the rolling power cuts at the beginning of the month and said that their decision will not only be beneficial to residents to recharge devices and complete other tasks, but also help curb theft and vandalism of infrastructure that happens during prolonged load shedding.
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