City of Cape Town customers to face Stage 1 and Stage 3 load shedding today

After checking its generation capacity, the City has announced how Cape residents will be affected by load shedding. Picture: Armand Hough/African News Agency (ANA)

After checking its generation capacity, the City has announced how Cape residents will be affected by load shedding. Picture: Armand Hough/African News Agency (ANA)

Published Mar 9, 2022

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Cape Town - While Eskom announced that it would move from Stage 2 to Stage 4 load shedding as of 9am today, the City of Cape Town announced that its customers would face Stage 3.

In a statement released early on Wednesday, the power utility said Stage 4 would be implemented until 5am on Friday in order to manage its emergency reserves.

“It is with a great deal of disappointment that Eskom has to inform the public that further failures overnight of generation units has necessitated the implementation of Stage 4 load shedding starting at 9am this morning,” Eskom said.

The City of Cape Town, meanwhile, shared on Twitter that its customers would be on Stage 1 load shedding until 10am and then move to Stage 3, which will last until 10pm tonight.

The City usually provides an update later in the day on what its load shedding schedule will look like for the following day. It added that it would do its best to protect its customers where possible.

Eskom’s move to Stage 4 comes after a unit each at the Kendal, Duvha, Camden and Kusile power stations tripped overnight, the power utility said.

It stated, however, that four generating units have returned to service. However, the units still needed to ramp up to full output, which necessitated a high usage of emergency generation reserves today.

Eskom said due to the overnight failures, load shedding would be lowered to Stage 2 from Friday until Monday, March 14, 5am.

“This being the fourth day of extremely high diesel usage, the emergency reserves are being depleted faster than can be replenished.

“Stage 4 load shedding will therefore give us the space required to replenish the emergency reserves and continue to manage the system safely.

“Eskom would like to apologise for the implementation of load shedding and will continuously review the situation and act appropriately as circumstances change,” it said.

The City of Cape Town has previously explained that it is able to spare its customers from one stage of load shedding due to the Steenbras Hydro Pump Station.

“When the City offers protection to its customers by implementing a stage lower than that of Eskom, it is done by harnessing spare generation capacity from its Steenbras Hydro Pump Station, and not through non-compliance with the implementation of load shedding as instructed by Eskom.”

Cape Argus