By now most South Africans assume that loadshedding is here to stay. While Eskom hasn’t explicitly said that it would be loadshedding this week, many electricity users fell into Stage 1 shedding this morning.
Due to the electricity demand that has exceeded the supply; Eskom implemented load shedding Stage 1 from 11h00 until 22h00 tonight.
— Eskom Hld SOC Ltd (@Eskom_SA) January 26, 2015
On a number of occasions the energy producer said that loadshedding won’t be coming into play as long as systems hold up – but it is unclear what exactly caused the nationwide outage. According to various reports on social media, it seems as though Eskom took a bullet for the country and loadshed its own Megawatt Park headquarters in Johannesburg.
During a previous media briefing, Eskom highlighted which days of the coming months were more susceptible to loadshedding.
[Image – CC by 2.0/Lauren Rushing]