CAPE TOWN – In October, South Africa’s state-owned power utility Eskom warned of the risk of load-shedding following power constraints due to maintenance and unplanned outages at several of its electricity-generating units.
The power system was “severely constrained”, said Eskom, which supplies more than 90 percent of the nation’s power.
However, this month it explained that there is a low probability of load shedding.
“We have managed to conclude new coal contracts that will enable us to achieve an upwards turning on declining coal stock levels and bring about a marked improvement from December onwards, albeit slowly. Our short-term strategy to augment coal stocks at power stations that were below the minimum days is two-pronged, namely, coal procurement and diverting coal from well-stocked power stations,” Eskom group chief executive Phakamani Hadebe said.
“We aim to improve coal stock levels at the impacted power stations from December and grow the total stock days from an average of 25 to 28 days by the end of the current financial year.”
Nonetheless, it is good to be prepared for the worst. Here are a few apps that will let you know when load shedding will happen in your area.
1. Loadshed
What you can do with the App:
- Access load shedding schedules for multiple suburbs or areas
- Get push notification when load shedding will take place and when the load shedding stage changes.
- Real-time monitoring of important sources for load shedding updates.
- Add multiple suburbs to your watchlist.
Available on iOS, Android
Supported areas: Eskom direct customers, Cape Town (City of Cape Town), Stellenbosch, Knysna, Johannesburg (City Power), Pretoria (City of Tshwane), Durban (eThekwini), and more areas are being added every day.
2. Gridwatch
What you can do with the App:
- It will send you a notification just before load shedding is about to take place.
- You can customise the app for different areas in your daily life i.e work, school, home etc.
- You can also report outages and errors on load shedding schedules from the app.
3. Loadshedder Alert
What you can do with the App:
- Help warn South Africa before their power turns off.
- Get warning notifications before their power is scheduled to turn off and get notifications when the stage changes.
- This application uses load-shedding schedules provided by Eskom and local Municipalities but is in no way linked to them.
- Information and warnings are based on publicly available data sources and best effort algorithms
Direct Eskom customers and municipalities listed below are able to download schedules and
List of supported Areas:
Direct Eskom customers
Cape Town
Ekurhuleni
Durban (Ethekwini)
Bloemfontein (Mangaung)
Pietermaritzburg (The Msunduzi)
4. EskomSePush
What you can do with the App:
- Get load shedding push notifications and predictions.
The app has over 50 000 areas from which you can select yours.
It is available on the Google Play store.