Eskom announces massive escalation in load shedding

Load shedding, which Eskom had been expected to implement only during the evening peaks this week, will now be ramped up significantly, the state-owned utility said on Wednesday.

Rolling national power cuts will now be implemented at stage 2 from 10am on Wednesday and will run until midnight. The cuts will then resume at 5am on Thursday and continue until midnight each day until Sunday.

It gets worse: Eskom warned that the stage of load shedding might also have to be ramped up during the evening peaks.

The company blamed further breakdowns at its ageing coal fleet for the renewed bout of severe load shedding, including a unit each at Kendal and Matimba and two units at Matla, all of which went offline on Wednesday morning.

“This reduced generation capacity by 2.4GW, adding to the ongoing capacity constraints,” Eskom said. “There has been a delay in returning to service a unit at Kusile power station, which is now expected to happen to tomorrow.”  — (c) 2022 NewsCentral Media