Load shedding changes for the week ahead – here’s the new schedule

Staff Writer18 December 2022

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Power utility Eskom will reduce load shedding stage 5 from Monday, with plans to move to stage 4 by Tuesday.

Stage 6 load shedding will be reduced to Stage 5 load shedding at 05h00 on Monday. Thereafter, Stage 4 load shedding will be implemented at 05h00 on Tuesday for the remainder of the week, the group said.

Eskom will publish a further update as soon as there are any significant changes.

Sunday, 18 December

  • Stage 6: until 00h00

Monday, 19 December

  • Stage 6: 00h00 to 05h00
  • Stage 5: 05h00 to 00h00

Tuesday, 20 December

  • Stage 5: 00h00 to 05h00
  • Stage 4: 05h00 until further notice

The move to lower stages follows the confirmation that the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) has been deployed to four power stations.

Eskom confirmed on Saturday evening (17 December) that SANDF forces have been deployed to Majuba, Camden Grootvlei and Tutuka to assist with keeping criminals at bay. Eskom’s fleet has been subject to high levels of crime and have fallen prey to criminal syndicates stealing coal and diesel and sabotaging systems.

South Africa is likely to sit with prolonged levels of load shedding for the foreseeable future. Last Saturday (10 December) 1,000MW was removed from the grid through Koeberg unit 1 being taken offline, and approximately 3,000MW is offline from various breakdowns at Kusile and Medupi.

According to Eskom’s outlook for the next year, it needs to keep breakdowns below 13,000MW to stave off the worst of load shedding, but the utility has struggled to keep outages below 16,000MW – the worst-case scenario in its plans.

Eskom CEO Andre de Ruyter announced his resignation this week on the back of the worst levels of load shedding on record. While Public Enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan acknowledged that de Ruyter is not to blame for the load shedding, the power utility has not been able to resolve the crisis under his leadership.

Schedules 

For people living in the major metros, load shedding schedules are available here:

For access to other load shedding schedules, Eskom has made them available on loadshedding.eskom.co.za.

Smartphone users can also download the app EskomSePush to receive push notifications when load shedding is implemented, as well as the times the area you are in will be off.