Load shedding stage 2 starts at 6am today

Cape Town - Eskom said on Tuesday it will implement stage 2 load shedding from 06:00, and this is likely to continue until 22:00 this evening.

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This follows two days of load shedding, with several consumers alerting Fin24 on Monday that they experienced longer power outages than the normal scheduled two hours.

One user from Athlone said her power went out at 16:00 and came back on for 5 minutes before going off again. It eventually went on again close to 21:00.

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The same happened for consumers in Cape Town's Zone 5, where the power came on twice for a couple of minutes just to go out again. The total load shedding time for them amounted to almost four hours.

Eskom said in a statement on Monday evening that it had stopped stage 2 load shedding and load curtailment at about 22:13. "It is important to note that restoration of power takes longer in some areas."

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On Tuesday Eskom said the electricity supply system remains very vulnerable due to a shortage of generation capacity as several units are currently out of service due to planned and unplanned outages.

Eskom said it would like to assure customers that load shedding is implemented as a necessary measure to protect the power system.

"Any additional changes on the already vulnerable and constrained power system could lead to a change in the stage of load shedding at short notice. We will communicate if there is a need to change stages."