Good news for weekend load-shedding
Eskom has announced that it will suspend load-shedding from 05:00 on Saturday, 11 November 2023, until 16:00 on Monday, 13 November.
The power utility attributed the suspension of rotational power cuts to anticipated low demand and sufficient emergency reserves.
“Due to the anticipated lower weekend electricity demand and adequate emergency reserves, Stage 2 load-shedding will be implemented from 16:00 today until 05:00 on Saturday as previously communicated,” it said.
“Thereafter, load-shedding will be suspended until 16:00 on Monday. An update on the outlook for the next week will be announced on Sunday.”
Eskom said it will communicate any significant changes should they occur.
This follows a load-shedding pattern where power cuts were suspended from 05:00 until 16:00, and Stage 2 load-shedding was implemented from 16:00 until 05:00 the following day, since Monday, 6 November 2023.
Prior to that, Eskom was forced to implement higher stages of load-shedding due to a series of generation unit breakdowns between late October and 5 November 2023.
Kgosientsho Ramokgopa, South Africa’s electricity minister, said Eskom “dropped the ball” while referring to the increased unavailable capacity resulting from generation unit breakdowns.
“We have done exceptionally well over a period of three months [but] I think the ball has been dropped here,” said Ramokgopa.
“As a result of these failures, and this is something that is receiving attention, we’ve gone back to about 17,000MW [of breakdowns], and this is totally unacceptable, I must say.”
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