Cape Town — Eskom has announced that Stage 3 loadshedding will return from 2pm on Friday, 7 March, and will remain that way for the rest of the weekend.
In a statement, the power utility said that the decision was made after 2 700mW were lost in the past 14 hours, which includes Koeberg Unit 2, that was taken offline on Wednesday, and two Kusile units that were sub-optimal due to adverse weather.
“This constrained capacity resulted in the increased reliance on emergency reserves during this week, which makes it necessary to focus on replenishing these critical resources during the weekend in preparation for the business week,” Eskom said, adding that Stage 3 was triggered after the system was already placed under strain.
Eskom implements Stage 3 loadshedding from 14:00 today and anticipates to be in this mode until Monday at 05:00, following 98% availability of power supply, due to loss of 2700MW over the past 14 hours. To replenish emergency reserves over the weekend –
ongoing… pic.twitter.com/t690tFZ24Y— Eskom Hld SOC Ltd (@Eskom_SA) March 7, 2025
Eskom CEO, Dan Morokane, said loadshedding was a painful reminder of the past, and situations like this drive the resolve to seek the end of loadshedding.
“We apologise to the nation for this temporary setback. We have to keep our focus on intensive maintenance as evidenced by year-to-date (1 April 2204 to 27 Ferbuary 2025) where loadshedding was suspended for 325 consecutive days,” he said.
He maintained that loadshedding was largely a thing of the past and said the generation recovery plan is committed to addressing capacity challenges.
Eskom will continue to monitor the situation and provide updates as needed.
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Compiled by Matthew Petersen
