Eskom announces load-shedding

Eskom is implementing stage 3 load-shedding from 14:00 on Friday, 7 March 2025, until 05:00 on Monday, 10 March 2025.

The implementation comes after the loss of 2,700MW in the preceding 14 hours, while the system was already under strain.

Koeberg Unit 2 was taken offline again after being brought back on Wednesday and two large units at the Kusile power station experienced “sub-optimal” operations due to adverse weather.

“The constrained capacity resulted in the increased reliance on emergency reserves during this week, which makes it necessary to focus on replenishing these critical resources during the weekend in preparation for the business week.”

The state-owned power utility added that higher levels of planned maintenance outages, aimed at winter preparation and meeting regulatory and environmental licensing requirements, were also underway.

Eskom generation head Bheki Nxumalo said that the power utility was in a “challenging time” in its two-year generation recovering plan, with its full force of skilled engineering resources deployed and focused.

“We again apologise to the nation for this temporary setback,” Nxumalo said.

“We have had some delays in returning units that previously tripped back to the grid, as well as to the return of three units that have been on longer-term outage that will bring back 2,500MW to the grid, which will happen over the coming weeks,” Nxumalo said.

“We reiterate our commitment to ensuring that South Africa is in no way returning to the levels of load-shedding that we experienced in 2023.”

Eskom CEO Dan Marokane said that Eskom needed to continue its intensive maintenance programme, which had resulted in significant load-shedding reductions in the financial year-to-date.

Between 1 April 2024 and 27 February 2025, load-shedding was not implemented for 325 days (7,871 hours), compared to 32 days (2,103 hours) in the same period in the previous year.

“Electricity supply was available 98% of the time, compared to just 9.6% last year, that was a result of the deep maintenance we did in summer 2023/2024,” said Marokane.

Eskom said it would deploy extra engineering resources to expedite the repair of units currently offline.

“It is anticipated that 6,200MW will be restored to service by Monday’s evening peal,” the power utility said.

Reduced power cuts for Cape Town

One of Eskom’s biggest municipal customers — the City of Cape Town — confirmed the implementation in a post on Twitter/X before the power utility released its statement.

Due to the city’s Steenbras pumped storage dam, it will be able to reduce the power cuts to stage 1 until 22:00 on Friday and again between 06:00 and 12:00 in the morning on Saturday.

Popular load-shedding app EskomSePush also sent a notification to its users warning about the power cuts before Eskom’s official notice.

The graph below from the Power Alert website shows forecasted hourly electricity demand in South Africa.

The colouring indicates how this compares to electricity availability, with red showing a severely constrained system and black representing a shortage of supply.