Cape Town — Just 24 hours after President Cyril Ramaphosa announced that South Africa would be pulling out all the stops to end load shedding, the struggling power utility announced in the early hours of Saturday morning that it will be moving to stage 6.
Following the conclusion of Ramaphosa’s SONA, the country moved to stage 4 load shedding, after weeks of Eskom keeping South Africans on lower stages. This caused outrage as Ramaphosa said the worst of the power cuts were behind us and it was the result of efforts around restructuring the electricity sector.
“We set out a clear plan to end load shedding, which we have been implementing with a single-minded focus through the National Energy Crisis Committee. We have delivered on our commitments to bring substantial new power through private investment on to the grid, which is already helping to reduce load shedding,” he said.
However, by Saturday morning, things had gone from bad to worse for Eskom as they implemented stage 6 load shedding for the first time since November 2023. They said this was due to high demand in some areas.
“In spite of returning two generating units to service over the last 24 hours, two generating units were also taken offline. This combined with the need to replenish the pumped storage dams in preparation for the week ahead, necessitated the implementation of Stage 6 loadshedding from midnight until further notice. Our teams are working diligently to return the generation units back online. Eskom will communicate further should any significant changes occur.” Eskom said.
Saturday, 10 February 2024:
In spite of returning two generating units to service over the last 24 hours, two generating units were also taken offline. This combined with the need to replenish the pumped storage dams in preparation for the week ahead,…
— Eskom Hld SOC Ltd (@Eskom_SA) February 9, 2024
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Compiled by Matthew Petersen
