Eskom announces first load-shedding of 2024 — with over 24,600MW capacity offline

Eskom has announced the first load-shedding of 2024 will be implemented from Tuesday, 2 January.
The utility blamed the need to reintroduce the power cuts after nearly a three-week break on a setback in its planned maintenance efforts, with three generating units with a potential 2,148MW capacity not coming back online as anticipated.
In addition, the utility recently experienced the unplanned losses of six generating units with a combined capacity of 3,113MW.
“Unplanned outages are currently at 16,231MW of generating capacity, while the capacity out of service for planned maintenance is 8,451MW,” Eskom said.
Taken together, Eskom had 24,682MW of capacity unavailable at the time of its statement. Eskom also expects demand to increase in the coming days.
As a result, stage 2 load-shedding will be implemented from 05:00 until 16:00 on Tuesday.
Thereafter, Eskom will ramp up to stage 3 load-shedding until 05:00 on Wednesday, 3 January.
“This pattern of Stage 2 loadshedding in the morning and Stage 3 loadshedding in the evening will be repeated daily until further notice,” Eskom said.
Eskom said its teams were working to ensure that 4,921MW of generating capacity was returned to service before the end of the week.
Eskom’s load forecast for the evening peak demand for Tuesday is 23,011MW.
The table below shows the load-shedding schedule from Tuesday, 2 January 2024.
Load-shedding from 2 January 2024 | |||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Date | Day | Daytime (05:00–16:00) | Evening peak (16:00–05:00) | ||
2 January 2024 | Tuesday | Stage 2 | Stage 3 | ||
3 January 2024 | Wednesday | Stage 2 | Stage 3 | ||
4 January 2024 | Thursday | Stage 2 | Stage 3 | ||
Until further notice |