Eskom Ramps Up Load Shedding to Stage 4 Until Friday 5am

Eskom has announced that it will be ramping load shedding to stage 4 from 1pm until 5am on Friday, wherereafter Stage 2 load shedding will continue until 5am on Saturday.

The power utility says while it regrets the escalation in load shedding, it is necessary to ration the remaining emergency generation reserves, which have been utilised extensively Monday morning as it was not getting the reduction in demand as expected from the implementation of Stage 2 load shedding.

Eskom’s Sikonathi Mantshantsha says load shedding is implemented as a last resort to maintain the stability of the power system regardless of the stage of load shedding.

“It was anticipated that an additional seven units would have returned to service by Monday, and this has not materialised. Further, a generating unit at Arnot power station tripped this morning, contributing to the shortages.”

Mantshantsha says Eskom would like to apologise for the inconvenience caused by the implementation of load shedding, and requests the public to reduce the usage of electricity in order to help us through the constraints.