Cape Town – Power utility Eskom on Thursday announced it will be implementing Stage 3 load shedding as of 9pm until 5am on Friday.
Thereafter, Stage 2 load shedding will be implemented until 5am on Saturday.
The power utility said it was able to bring back generation capacity to service over the last 24 hours.
“Over the past 24 hours a unit each at the Koeberg, Medupi, Kriel, Duvha, Kusile and Tutuka power stations returned to service, helping ease the current capacity constraints.
“Unfortunately, during this time, a unit each at Majuba and Arnot power stations tripped while a single unit at Matla was forced to shut down.
“While this allowed space to reduce the utilisation of emergency generation reserves, it is, however, still insufficient to end the current load shedding.
“The next two days will be used to further improve the emergency reserves in preparation for the week ahead,” it said.
Eskom said the total breakdowns currently amount to 14 161MW while planned maintenance is 5 449 MW of capacity.
The power utility said it wanted to remind its customers and the public that load shedding is implemented as a last resort to maintain stability of the power system regardless of the stage of load shedding as the power systems remains to be effectively controlled.
“Eskom would like to assure the public that there is a very low probability of a system collapse, and therefore, no cause for alarm,” it said.
It also apologised for the inconvenience to all citizens, especially Grade 12s who are currently studying for their final exams.