Eskom has announced it will increase its planned load-shedding stages to an alternating rotation of stage 4 and stage 5 from Wednesday.
The utility said it suffered breakdowns of four generating units — one each at Duvha, Lethabo, Majuba and Tutuka power stations — over the past 24 hours.
It was also struggling with delays in returning a unit each to service at Arnot, Camden, Duvha and Kendal power stations.
Despite returning a unit each at Camden, Kriel, Matla, and Matimba power stations, breakdowns stood at 19,031MW.
Eskom also had 4,174MW of generating capacity out of service for planned maintenance.
The utility initially aimed to gradually drop load-shedding to stage 3 during most daytime hours and stage 4 during the evenings and early mornings. This will still be the case for Tuesday.
However, instead of dropping to stage 3 during the daytime hours on Wednesday, load-shedding will remain at stage 4 until 16:00.
After that, Eskom will ramp up to stage 5 until 05:00 on Thursday.
Stage 4 load-shedding will be repeated between 05:00 and 16:00 on Thursday and Friday, while stage 5 will run over Thursday evening and the early morning on Friday.
“This pattern will continue until further notice,” Eskom said.
The table below shows Eskom’s revised load-shedding schedule for the rest of the week.
| Eskom load-shedding timetable from 28 February 2023 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Date | Day | Start Time | End Time | Stage |
| 28 February 2023 | Tuesday | 00:00 | 05:00 | 3 |
| 05:00 | 16:00 | 4 | ||
| 1 March 2023 | Wednesday | 00:00 | 16:00 | 4 |
| 16:00 | 24:00 | 5 | ||
| 2 March 2023 | Thursday | 00:00 | 05:00 | 5 |
| 05:00 | 16:00 | 4 | ||
| 16:00 | 24:00 | 5 | ||
| 3 March 2023 | Friday | 00:00 | 05:00 | 5 |
| 05:00 | 16:00 | 4 |