Eskom extends stage 3 load shedding – here’s the new schedule

3 years ago 1

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Eskom has announced that stage 3 load shedding will be extended until Wednesday (7 December), thereafter falling back to stage 2 until further notices.

Stage 3 load shedding will be from 16h00 to 05h00 on Tuesday on Wednesday.

Stage 2 load shedding will continue being implemented from 05h00 until 16h00 daily until further notice.

Eskom said it will publish a further update as soon as there are any significant changes.

“Load shedding is being implemented due to a high number of breakdowns and the requirement to preserve the remaining emergency generation reserves while creating space to replenish the dam levels at the pumped storage schemes,” it said.

A generating unit each at Camden and Kendal power stations was taken offline for repairs over the past 24 hours.

The delay in returning to service a generating unit each at Arnot, Kriel and Matla power stations has contributed to the capacity constraints.

A generating unit each at Arnot, Duvha, Grootvlei, Kendal, Kriel, Lethabo, and two units at Majuba power stations were returned to service during this period.

Eskom said it currently has 4,394MW on planned maintenance, while another 16,880MW of capacity is unavailable due to breakdowns.

“As previously communicated, due to the depletion of the budget to acquire diesel for the Open Cycle Gas Turbines, Eskom has been forced to strictly conserve the remainder of the fuel reserves to
protect against further unplanned outages.

“The refuelling and maintenance outage starting this week, as well as the long-term operation project of Unit 1 of the Koeberg Nuclear Power Station, together with the October chimney failure that has forced three generation units offline at Kusile Power Station.

This will further reduce available generation capacity and significantly increase the occurrence of load shedding during the next 6 -12 months, Eskom said.

Eskom’s load shedding forecast for the year ahead shows that the group either has to keep unplanned outages below 13,000MW or have billions of rands more to spend on diesel to keep load shedding at bay – or, at the very least, at low stages.

However, neither of these options is available. The group has been largely unsuccessful in keeping outages below 16,000MW – its worst-case scenario – and there is simply no more money for diesel.

As the group prepares to pull another 920MW offline at Koeberg this week, several failures and disasters at the Medupi and Kusile power stations are keeping a further 3,000MW off the grid for the next year at least.

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.

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