Eskom plans to gradually reduce load-shedding to a day-night rotation of stage 3 and stage 4 in the coming week but will resume stage 5 for several hours on Monday night and Tuesday morning.

In a statement on Sunday evening, the utility said stage 4 load-shedding would remain in effect until 16:00 on Monday, after which stage 5 is set to be implemented until 05:00 on Tuesday morning.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, Eskom plans to implement stage 3 during most of the day-time hours (05:00-16:00) and stage 4 during the evenings (16:00-05:00)

The utility said it had returned a generating unit each at the Arnot, Grootvlei, Kendal, Medupi and Tutuka power stations back to service in the past 24 hours.

However, it suffered breakdowns of a unit each at the Camden, Majuba and Matimba power stations.

There was also delay in returning units to service at Arnot, Hendrina, Kendal, Medupi and Tutuka power stations, contributing further to the current capacity constraints.

In addition, electricity imports from the Cahora Bassa Hydro Scheme in Mozambique had been halved to 600MW due to a tower failure on one of the lines from that country.

Due to the abovementioned factors, the utility said that unplanned breakdowns stood at roughly 16,870MW of generating capacity. Another 4,757MW was offline for scheduled maintenance.

Eskom added that four open-cycle gas turbines at its Ankerlig peak power station were out of service until 15 March 2023.

These could contribute to further capacity constraints, particularly during peak demand periods.

Eskom added it would publish an update as soon as were any significant changes in the state of the power system.

The table below shows Eskom’s planned load-shedding schedule for the next few days.