POLL | Have you prepared for stage 8 load-shedding?

As the country gears up for a cold and dark winter, Eskom has warned it will ramp up the stages of load-shedding.

South Africa is gripped in stage 4 and stage 6 load-shedding, as the power utility struggles to generate enough electricity to keep the lights on.

It said on Thursday the situation could get worse as winter sets in, and stage 8 could be implemented.

Eskom's group executive of transmission Segomoco Scheppers said the utility was on the back foot and had an “unpredictable” generation fleet, with breakdowns that could hit at any time.

While some people have invested in solar, generators or inverters, others said they would have to brave winter in the dark. A few predicted load-shedding stages would escalate into double digits.

Energy economist Lungile Mashele told the Sunday Times South Africa could experience what would “essentially be stage 10 load-shedding”.

Mashele is an energy and infrastructure specialist at the Public Investment Corporation. He said no new energy generation had been sourced and three generating units at Kusile and one at Koeberg would not be back online before winter. 

“Unless something radical happens in the next few weeks we are heading into winter with only 25GW (25,000MW) available capacity and demand at 33GW, with a possibility of getting to 35GW. This is going to leave a 10GW shortfall, which is essentially stage 10.”

My Broadband earlier quoted Eskom as saying it was planning for up to 16 stages of load-shedding.

While load-shedding may be ramped up, former senior manager in Eskom’s transmission department, Hein Vosloo, told the Sunday Times a complete collapse of the grid was “almost impossible” but could happen “under a set of extraordinary circumstances”. 

“A complete collapse is possible if we lose several power lines at once, like what happened in the US in 2003. Either that or if all our power stations go down simultaneously and we are left with no generation capacity.

“That means the diesel power stations in the Cape fail as well as the hydro supply from Cahora Bassa in Mozambique and both Koeberg units. The dams at our pump stations must be empty.

“If this perfect storm happens we will have a blackout and repairing it [quickly] would be virtually impossible because we won’t have electricity to get the system up and running again. That can cause weeks of blackout,” Vosloo said.

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