Eskom drops load shedding to stage 2 until further notice

3 years ago 1

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Power utility Eskom has announced that load shedding will be reduced to stage 2 on Friday (25 November) until further notice.

Load shedding was previously expected to follow a stage 2 to stage 3 cycle during the day and in the evenings, respectively.

This follows the group securing sufficient diesel from PetroSA this week, which is assisting the utility in staving off two levels of load shedding through its open-cycle gas turbines.

Eskom had to escalate load shedding to stage 5 this past week after it ran out of diesel for the turbines. The company has burned through R12 billion worth of diesel this financial year, blowing way past its budget.

Had the group not been able to secure diesel with the assistance of the Department of Public Enterprises and PetroSA, it would not have been able to refill its fuel reserves until April 2023, keeping the country on a knife’s edge of high levels of load shedding.

While Eskom has secured 50 million litres of diesel, for now, energy experts say that the stock is unlikely to last that long and that a longer-term solution is needed. They have warned that without sufficient diesel supply, the country risks running into a total blackout.

Public enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan said that he is in discussions with his counterpart in National Treasury, finance minister Enoch Godongwana, on a long-term solution for supply. This is likely to come at an expense to taxpayers, however.

The taxpayer is already on the hook for much of Eskom’s financial problems, with the Treasury announcing in October that it will be taking over around two-thirds of the utility’s R400 billion debt.

The prospects for load shedding, meanwhile, look bleak.

South Africa’s load shedding outlook for the next year

South Africans have become accustomed to ongoing bouts of stage 2 load shedding, which have become the norm, but with a key unit in Eskom’s fleet coming offline in December for maintenance – and staying offline until the middle of next year – the risk of load shedding at even higher stages, for longer periods, is high.

In addition to this, critical failures, explosions and sabotage are also dragging on supply, with many of these issues anticipated to keep the grid under strain for the next 12 months.

Addressing the media this week, president Cyril Ramaphosa said he is confident that Eskom, the government and stakeholders in the energy sector will overcome the load shedding challenge and bring an end to rolling blackouts.

This has been a promise from the government over the last 15 years.

The president said that it is easy to blame the government for persistent load shedding, but he said that the issues have persisted since at least 2007, long before the current administration came into power.

He has pinned his hopes for an end to the crisis on a wide-reaching energy plan that will see the rapid development of new green energy projects, alongside procurement of energy from the private sector.

Schedules

For people living in the major metros, load shedding schedules are available here:

For access to other load shedding schedules, Eskom has made them available on loadshedding.eskom.co.za.

Smartphone users can also download the app EskomSePush to receive push notifications when load shedding is implemented, as well as the times the area you are in will be off.

Read: Ramaphosa: It’s easy to blame the president for load shedding, but…