- Loadshedding returns this weekend with Eskom publishing a confusing schedule of Stage 1 and Stage 2 blackouts.
- The power cuts are set to continue for the rest of the week, but it seems like Sunday may have a period that is loadshedding-free.
- Eskom says it was forced to implement loadshedding over the weekend as its emergency reserves near depletion.
South Africans are headed for another bewildering weekend of loadshedding, with Eskom publishing their schedule today at 5:30. The embattled utility has recently gotten into the habit of announcing outage schedules that resemble phone numbers, but worry not as we’re here to make a bit more sense of it all.
As of now, Eskom says it anticipates “Stages 2 and 1 loadshedding (to) be implemented during the weekend.”
As you may be aware South Africa is dealing with Stage 3 rotational blackouts until 16:00 on Thursday 27th October. Stage 4 will be implemented thereafter until the end of the day 24:00.
Friday begins with Stage 4 blackouts until 5:00 when Eskom will mercifully decrease to Stage 2 until 16:00. From Friday evening South Africans will be under Stage 3 loadshedding until early Saturday morning.
From 5:00 on Saturday until 16:00 we will be under Stage 1 power cuts, thereafter we return to Stage 2 until the end of the day 24:00.
Sunday continues Stage 2 until 5:00 where it seems that loadshedding will be suspended for the rest of the day until 16:00 when Stage 2 returns leading us into the new week.
So, in all: from Thursday there will be worse loadshedding in the evenings until the early morning, whereafter loadshedding eases until 16:00. The weekend will have the lightest loadshedding with Sunday having a brief respite from power cuts. However, the outages will continue after this into Monday.
Here is the full schedule published by Eskom:
Loadshedding will most likely increase from Monday on as Eskom says its emergency generation reserves are almost depleted in terms of both the diesel and pumped water.
Eskom is blaming these shortages for having to use loadshedding over the weekend but if the reserves aren’t restored in a timely manner South Africans will no doubt face more severe outages over the course of next week.
The utility reports that since Tuesday, electricity generation units have been returned to service at the Duvha, Kendal and Medupi power stations. The utility says that as of time of writing 16 585MW of capacity is “unavailable” and a further 5 683MW have been removed due to planned maintenance.
Varying stages of loadshedding will be implemented until midnight on Sunday pic.twitter.com/ejrkswl9J2
— Eskom Hld SOC Ltd (@Eskom_SA) October 27, 2022
Loadshedding has unfortunately become a part of our lives and with no end in sights, it is important that we keep tabs on the outages to minimise disruptions.
To this end, we urge you to check out the popular loadshedding tracking app EskomSePush for Android and iOS.
[Image – CC 0 Andrey Metelev on Unsplash]
