Eskom was forced to escalate loadshedding to Stage 4 on Tuesday at short notice, leaving the country groaning at the thought of increased outages for the next 48 hours.
Why did Eskom implement Stage 4 loadshedding?
In a statement released on Twitter on Tuesday morning, the national electricity supplier revealed that a sudden breakdown of three power generation units at Kendal forced drastic measures to be taken.
Therefore, Stage 4 loadshedding will be implemented from 10:00 on Tuesday until 05:00 on Thursday, 15 September 2022. This, Eskom explained, is due to the fact that the unplanned breakdown reported at Kendal on Tuesday morning resulted in the loss of 1 920MW of power.
“A full statement will be published shortly,” the statement read.
In Cape Town, households connected to the City’s grid will be somewhat alleviated from the worst of Stage 4 loadshedding. In fact, when the rest of South Africa plunges into increased power outages, City of Cape Town customers will remain on Stage 2 loadshedding from 10:00 until 12:00.
Thereafter, rotational power cuts will be minimised to Stage 3 from noon until 22:00. Stage 4 loadshedding will only be implemented at 22:00 until 05:00 on Wednesday, 14 September 2022.
The schedule will be repeated until loadshedding expires on Thursday.
“The CIty of Cape Town is able to generate additional capacity to protect customers from one or more stages of Eskom’s loadshedding, where we are able to do so. Cape Town is the only city in South Africa that can provide this extra relief to our residents,” the City noted in a statement.
Readers from these metros can check the latest loadshedding schedule below:
- City of Johannesburg
- City of Ekurhuleni
- City of Tshwane
- City of Cape Town
- Nelson Mandela Bay
- eThekwini
- Manguang
- Buffalo City
Here are some of the reactions we picked out from social media following Eskom’s announcement: