ESKOM has announced that load shedding will be pushed to stage 6 on Tuesday.
Load shedding will move to stage 6 from 21h00, following the breakdown of seven generating units.
Stage 6 will continue until 05h00 on Wednesday, before returning to stage 4 until 16h00.
The pattern of stage 4 load shedding between 05h00 and 16h00, and then stage 6 between 16h00 and 05h00 will repeat until further notice, Eskom said.
“Eskom will promptly communicate a further update as soon as there are any significant changes,” it said.
“Seven units tripped today, of which three have returned to service. In addition, the return to service of three other units has been delayed. Unit 1 of Matla Power Station will be shut down tonight to repair a boiler tube leak.”
South Africa is likely to sit with prolonged levels of load shedding for the foreseeable future. In December 2022, 1,000MW was removed from the grid through Koeberg unit 1 being taken offline, and approximately 3,000MW is offline from various breakdowns at Kusile and Medupi.
According to Eskom’s outlook for the next year, it needs to keep breakdowns below 13,000MW to stave off the worst of load shedding, but the utility has struggled to keep outages below 16,000MW – the worst-case scenario in its plans.
Staff Reporter
