Eskom made a u-turn less than 24 hours after suspending rotational power outages to announce that stage 2 loadshedding is set to return on Monday evening.
Stage 2 loadshedding is back
The state-owned power utility, in a statement that has since been deleted from social media, sent cheers when it noted a marginal improvement in its generation capacity, prompting its decision to lift loadshedding.
However, it seems Eskom may have acted too soon since, less than 24 hours later, the utility has had to walk back the suspension with the return of stage 2 loadshedding.
In a statement released on Monday, Eskom confirmed that rotational blackouts will return from 17:00 until 22:00 “due to the breakdown of a generation unit each at Majuba and Medupi power stations today.”
“Three generation units are expected to return to service by this evening, which will ramp up through the night,” the power utility noted.
At the time this article was published, the national electricity supplier had 2 246MW of power not feeding into the grid due to planned maintenance, while another 15 847MW was cut off the supply chain by unplanned breakdowns.
“We would like to remind the public that loadshedding is implemented only as a last resort to protect the national grid. We therefore urge all South Africans to continue using electricity sparingly especially between 05:00 – 09:00 in the mornings and 16:00 – 22:00 in the evenings,” the statement concluded.
#POWERALERT1
— Eskom Hld SOC Ltd (@Eskom_SA) May 30, 2022
Stage 2 loadshedding will be implemented from 17:00 until 22:00 tonight pic.twitter.com/aUjpTfgWz9