Eskom suspends and restarts load-shedding at lower stage

Eskom suspended load-shedding at 00:53 on Sunday morning, resuming at stage 3 from 07:45.

Crisis communication manager Menzi Mngomezulu said this was due to lower demand overnight.

The state-owned power utility previously planned to load-shed at stage 4 between 05:00 and 16:00 on Sunday, increasing to stage 6 for the evening peak.

It is unclear whether Eskom’s plans for Sunday evening and Monday have changed.

MyBroadband contacted Eskom for clarification, and Mngomezulu said they would provide another update at 10:30 on Sunday.

The latest evening peak statistics Eskom published is for Friday, 12 May 2023. These were posted at 19:46 on Saturday.

They show that Eskom had 25,247 MW of capacity available with a total demand of 29,614 MW.

Eskom had removed 5,458 MW of load from the grid through demand-side reduction. No load curtailment was announced, so the bulk of this was likely load-shedding.

The power utility had burned diesel at eight open-cycle gas turbines during the evening peak.

A summary of the latest update with the previously announced load-shedding timetable is provided in the table below. Unknowns are indicated with a question mark.

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