Good news for Eskom load-shedding

Eskom plans to reduce load-shedding to stage 4 and stage 2 over the coming weekend.

In a statement late on Friday afternoon, the utility said it would drop from stage 5 to stage 4 load-shedding at 05:00 in the morning on Saturday.

This will be the case for 24 hours, before Eskom reduces load-shedding to stage 2 at 05:00 on Sunday morning.

That will remain in effect until at least Monday morning at the same time.

The utility said it would publish further updates as soon as there were any significant changes. The load-shedding schedule after 05:00 on Monday remains to be confirmed.

At the time of its statement, Eskom said it had 15,394MW of capacity unavailable due to unplanned outages, while a further 5,901 was offline for planned maintenance.

The unplanned unavailability showed a substantial improvement from when stage 6 was implemented on Wednesday, 7 December 2022, when Eskom had 19,052MW of capacity offline due to breakdowns.

Eskom said a unit each at Arnot, Duvha, Grootvlei, Kendal, Kriel, Matimba and Medupi power stations were returned to service since Thursday morning.

However, it had also taken a generating unit each at Camden, Lethabo, Majuba and Matla power stations offline for repairs and planned maintenance.

“In addition, the delay in returning to service a generating unit each at Arnot, Duvha and Kriel power stations has contributed to the capacity constraints,” Eskom added.

The table below shows the load-shedding schedule for the weekend and up to 05:00 on Monday morning.

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Good news for Eskom load-shedding