• Eskom has announced that Stage 6 loadshedding will be implemented at 12:00 on Friday until 05:00 on Monday morning.
• The utility says there is a shortage of both generating capacity and emergency reserves.
• Thankfully many retailers have specials on backup power supplies thanks to Black Friday.

While many South Africans are shopping for deals on Black Friday, Eskom has announced that the wheels have come off and Stage 6 loadshedding will be implemented at short notice.

The utility announced just before 11:00 on Friday morning that the severity of powercuts would be increased to Stage 6 following nearly a week of Stage 4 power cuts.

“It is with great regret that due to the shortage of generating capacity and emergency reserves, Stage 6 loadshedding will be implemented from 12:00 today until 05:00 on Monday,” Eskom wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

The utility added that it would publish further communication later in the day.

The utility has seemingly been struggling with its availability of generation capacity which on Wednesday amounted to just 26 407MW while there was a demand of 29 463MW.

This increase in loadshedding is particularly bad news for Johannesburg residents who will now have to deal with one-and-a-half to two-hour gaps between each block of loadshedding. While City Power did publish revised schedules this week to address that problem, the schedules only cover Stage 1 to 4.

“From Stage 5 up to 8, the 2-hour break problem will re-emerge. The higher stages, the more often that problem will re-occur in the loadshedding cycle. In addition to that challenge, we also like to inform customers that up to 4 blocks may encounter on few occasions, 4-hour straight of loadshedding due to the overlapping into a different day. This only occurs when customers appear on the 22h00 time slot and then appear again in the next day at 00h00 to 02h30 time slot,” City Power said this week.

Johannesburg residents served by City Power may have to wait up to two weeks for this problem to be resolved.

Those who have been toying with the idea of purchasing a backup power solution, may want to shop around for a deal today as it’s looking to a dark and hot weekend ahead for South Africans.

[Iamge – Marcel Strauß on Unsplash]