State of the nation: stage 4

Eskom escalated load shedding to stage 4 overnight, just hours after President Cyril Ramaphosa said in his state of the nation speech that the worst of South Africa’s crippling power cuts were over.

Eskom raised the level of load shedding twice overnight, first ramping up cuts at 10pm on Thursday to stage 3, and then implementing stage 4 “until further notice” from 2am on Friday.

Eskom blamed the increase to stage 4 on two additional generation units being taken out of service for repairs and said its teams were “working tirelessly to return the generation units back online”.

In an earlier statement, issued to announce the escalation to stage 3 on Thursday evening, Eskom said it had to replenish its pumped-storage dams to meet the morning and evening peak loads.

The return to severe stages of load shedding came hours after Ramaphosa told South Africans that the power cuts could soon be a thing of the past.

“These are phenomenal developments that are driving the restructuring of our electricity sector in line with what many other economies have done to increase competitiveness and bring down prices. Through all of these actions, we are confident that the worst is behind us and the end of load shedding is finally within reach,” the president said.

Read: Why South Africa struggles to end load shedding

“But we are not stopping there. To ensure that we never face a similar crisis ever again, we are reforming our energy system to make it more competitive, sustainable and reliable into the future,” he said.  – © 2024 NewsCentral Media

Get breaking news alerts from TechCentral on WhatsApp