Cape Town – While Eskom announced load shedding will move to Stage 4 on Wednesday afternoon, the City of Cape Town’s customers will be on Stage 3.
The City of Cape Town said: “City customers, shed by the City, will remain on Stage 1 load shedding until 16:00. Then City customers will move to Stage 3.”
The City has asked all residents to urgently reduce usage, and to switch off all non-essential electrical appliances.
The state owned power utility said the reason for the move to Stage 4 is due to the exceptionally high demand as a result of the cold weather.
“Due to the continuing severe generation supply constraints caused by multiple unit breakdowns as well as the additional demand caused by the cold weather.
“Eskom will escalate the level of load shedding to Stage 4 starting from 15:00 until 22:00.”
Load shedding will persist throughout the weekend the power utility said as they will be working to return as many of the generation units to service as possible.
Any changes in load shedding stages would be communicated to the public, it said.
Ten generation units broke down this week, but the company said on Wednesday that units at Tutuka, Komati, Hendrina and the Camden power station had been returned.
“Two additional units have, however, suffered breakdowns at the Matla and Kriel power stations.”
Unplanned breakdowns amounted to 11 300MW of capacity, adding to the 5 040MW currently out on unplanned maintenance.
Cape Argus