• Stage 4 and Stage 3 loadshedding will be in place for most of the weekend.
• Eskom intends to lower the severity of power cuts to Stage 2 on Sunday.
• As much as 15 388MW of generating capacity isn’t available to the utility.

UPDATE

Shortly after publishing the weekend schedule, Eskom revealed that Stage 4 had been in effect since 13:11 on Friday afternoon.

Stage 4 loadshedding is in place until 05:00 on Saturday morning.

Original story below.

The trend over the past few weekends where the severity of loadshedding has been lowered is over.

On Friday afternoon Eskom announced that breakdowns have removed 15 388MW of generating capacity from the grid. This comes following generating units at Hendrina, Matimba and Matla power stations being taken offline for repairs. In addition have been delays in returning generating units to service at Camden, Kriel and Tutuka power stations.

All of this means that Stage 4 loadshedding will be implemented from 16:00 on Friday until 05:00 on Saturday morning. Thereafter, Stage 3 loadshedding will be in place until 16:00 on Saturday afternoon and Stage 4 will be implemented again until 05:00 on Sunday morning.

Eskom has said that Stage 2 loadshedding will be in place from 05:00 to 16:00 on Sunday with loadshedding upgrading to Stage 3 after that until Monday afternoon at 16:00.

The utility added that generating units at Lethabo and Medupi power stations had returned to service but overall, the breakdowns were too much to keep loadshedding at lower levels.

To keep up-to-date with loadshedding levels and receive alerts before the lights go out, we highly recommend downloading EskomSePush for Android and iOS.

[Image – Markus Spiske on Unsplash]