Eskom announced that Stage 2 load shedding will continue on Monday 18 from 5am. Load shedding has been reduced to Stage 1 from 11 pm this evening.
The power utility said Stage 2 will continue because there has been a delay in the return of some generators. In addition, more load shedding is needed to manage emergency generation reserves.
“The system remains constrained and vulnerable,” said Eskom, in a statement.
The generation units delayed are those at the Kusile power station. One generation unit each at Kriel, Grootvlei and Duvha power stations.
“Despite Eskom’s stringent measures to manage the impact of the second wave of COVID-19 pandemic on operations, we are experiencing some impact on operations, including our suppliers,” said Eskom.
They also urged the public to reduce electricity consumption to help minimise the strain on the vulnerable system.
Last week, Eskom also said outages could continue until September. In a statement, they said, “We will really see a significant difference starting around September. At this particular point, we have got almost 15 000 megawatts of capacity that is out on unplanned breakdowns.”
Further on they admitted that even after September there are no guarantees but they are hoping load shedding will be ‘significantly reduced’.
The City has not yet announced which stage their users will be kept on.
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