Eskom ramps up load shedding to stage 2 until further notice

“Stage 2 load shedding will be implemented from 5am on Saturday until further notice”, Eskom announced early on Saturday morning,

The parastatal said the ramping up of the power cuts is a result of four generation units being taken out of service overnight on Friday.

Load shedding

Eskom spokesperson Daphne Mokwena said they will communicate should any significant changes occur to the load shedding schedule.

Eskom on Friday initially said load shedding would be suspended from 5am to 4pm on Saturday and Sunday, with stage 1 coming into force during the night.

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Eskom diesel budget

Earlier this week, Minister of Electricity, Kgosientsho Ramokgopa emphasised the need for Eskom to strike a balance between mitigating the severity of load shedding and adhering to the constraints of the diesel budget.

Briefing the media on Tuesday, Ramokgopa said there were two major points to draw from between 8 and 22 January on Eskom’s performance in generating electricity.

The minister said capacity available was greater than peak demand in the evening.

“[If ones asks] if you are making the claim that capacity available is greater than peak demand then why are we having load shedding is because 3 000 [megawatts] of capacity available has to be drawn from the open cycle gas turbines [OCGTs] which are burning diesel… so we have reduced our consumption on diesel,” he said.

He revealed the Eskom has not depleted its diesel budget and that the utility should find a balance in reducing the intensity of the rolling blackouts while not going over its budget.

“[Eskom] must remain within the parameters of what has been allocated. The financial year still has two or three months so it’s important that in terms for their own projections they don’t get to exhaust that because someone gets to pay for it and that somebody will be the end consumer,” the minister said.

Additional reporting by Molefe Seeletsa

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