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Prepare yourself for a week of load shedding

Cape Town – Eskom’s planned maintenance as well as unplanned outages resulted in the implementation of stage 2 load shedding on Monday, while its forecast for the week shows a lack of capacity for the required demand, which will result in more load shedding.

Eskom said in a statement on Monday that its planned maintenance stood at 3 429 MW, while unplanned outages resulted in 10 515 MW being shed from the grid.

“The capacity available to meet this evening’s peak demand is 29 747 MW, including open cycle gas turbines, while demand is forecast at 31 028 MW,” Eskom explained.

“Eskom had to go into stage 1 load shedding as of 11:00 today as a result of system constraints and unforeseen technical problems at its power stations.

“Load shedding moved from stage 1 to stage 2 at 15:00 and will continue until 22:00 this evening.”

The week ahead

Eskom’s estimated peak demand and available capacity for the rest of this week (including open cycle gas turbines):

Tuesday (27 January): The capacity available to meet Tuesday evening’s peak demand is 30 427 MW while demand is forecast 30 857 MW.

Wednesday (28 January): The capacity available to meet that evening’s peak demand is 30 095 MW while demand is forecast 30 842 MW.

Thursday (29 January): The capacity available to meet that evening’s peak demand is 29 775 MW while demand is forecast 30 921 MW.

Friday (30 January): The capacity available to meet that evening’s peak demand is 29 585 MW while demand is forecast 29 692 MW.

Saturday (31 January): The capacity available to meet that evening’s peak demand is 29 425 MW while demand is forecast 28 336 MW.  

Sunday (1 February): The capacity available to meet that evening’s peak demand is 29 643 MW while demand is forecast 28 086 MW.



“Eskom continues to make progress with its programme of planned maintenance, but the system remains tight.

“We urge all South Africans to partner with us to save 10% of their electricity usage throughout the day.  This will make it significantly easier to manage the power system during this challenging time, while also enabling us to do planned maintenance to ensure the reliability of our plant.

“The power system remains constrained and will remain so for the rest of this summer. Any extra load or faults in the system may necessitate the need to go into load shedding.”

“Eskom calls on consumers to urgently switch off geysers, air conditioners, pool pumps and all non-essential appliances throughout the day to reduce electricity demand. As workers leave office buildings this evening we ask that they please switch off the lights, with the exception of security lighting and avoid leaving on air-conditioning overnight.

“Commercial customers, particularly shopping centres and office blocks, can also make a big difference by switching off non-essential lights and not leaving office equipment such as photocopiers and computers in standby mode after hours."


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