Cape Town - Power cuts made its return on Wednesday morning as Eskom announced early in the morning that Stage 2 load shedding would be implemented from 11am today until 5am on Monday.
The City of Cape Town, in response, said its customers would be on Stage 1 throughout the day, until 10pm.
Eskom said load shedding was necessary due to a “shortage of generation capacity following breakdowns of two more generating units during the night".
The power supplier said that since the weekend, it had used a significant amount of emergency generating reserves. The reserves had been depleted and needed to be replenished.
"A unit each at Kusile and Kendal power stations tripped. Delays in returning units at Kusile, Tutuka, Duvha, Lethabo and Grootvlei have also contributed to the current supply constraints.
“Total breakdowns amount to 14 994MW while planned maintenance is 4 435MW of capacity as we continue with the reliability maintenance. Three generating units are expected to return to service by Wednesday afternoon," the power utility said.
In response, the City of Cape Town explained its load shedding schedule, adding that updates could follow at short notice, if required.
Load-shedding update
— City of Cape Town (@CityofCT) February 2, 2022
Eskom’s load-shedding starts from 11:00 today, 2 Feb 2022, until 05:00 on Mon, 7 Feb. Eskom customers will be on Stage 2.
The City will do its best to protect its customers where possible. City customers: 2 Feb
Stage 1: 11:00 – 22:00 Stage 2: 22:00 – 06:00 pic.twitter.com/FTJeHz8vIc
The City added: “Eskom’s load shedding typically causes power faults due to nuisance tripping and increased service requests.
“Please wait at least 30 minutes before logging a service request alerting the City that the power in your area has not come back after load-shedding.
“Sometimes, the issue is already being resolved. City teams will do their best to attend to any outages as soon as possible.”
Residents can see their load shedding schedule below: