• South Africans will be forced to endure Stage 5 loadshedding starting at 16:00 on Monday.
• Eskom plans to downgrade the severity of power cuts at 05:00 on Tuesday morning.
• The increase in loadshedding is brought on by the failure of five generating units.

On Sunday, Eskom declared that Stage 4 loadshedding would be in effect until Tuesday morning, but the best-laid plans of mice and Eskom are sure to fail.

On Monday the utility announced that it would be implementing Stage 5 loadshedding following the failure of as many as five generation units. Stage 5 loadshedding will be in effect until 05:00 on Tuesday morning. Stage 4 loadshedding will be in effect from Tuesday morning onwards.

On Sunday, Eskom said that while generation units at Duvha and Kriel power stations came online at the weekend, there were many more failures. Units at Hendrina, Medupi and Tutuka power stations are experiencing delays in being brought up to working order while units at Camden, Duvha, Majuba and Kriel Power stations suffered breakdowns and were taken offline for repairs.

“In addition, the repairs to the damaged towers from Cahora Bassa is taking longer than anticipated,” the utility said.

As of Sunday breakdowns were responsible for 17 340MW not being available and that figure is surely higher today given the move to Stage 5 loadshedding.

What the outlook for the rest of the week isn’t clear but we recommend downloading EskomSePush in order to keep abreast of any changes to the severity of power cuts.

Note that Stage 5 loadshedding can include a four hour power cut so be sure to check your schedules.

[Image – Tasha Kostyuk on Unsplash]