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Cape Town - Eskom announced on Wednesday that it will implement stage 2 load shedding from 16:00 to 22:00
"This is due to increased electricity demand and a shortage of generation capacity resulting from technical faults at some of our units," the power utility said.
Check your load shedding schedules on GridWatch.
Over the past three days, Eskom has had to implement load shedding mainly due to a sharp increase in electricity demand in the evenings. On Monday, electricity demand reached a high of 35 274 MW from an average demand of 33 000 MW, according to Eskom.
How to save up to 3 000 MW
Switching off energy intensive appliances such as electric geysers and pool pumps could save 2 940 MW and reduce the chance of load shedding, said Eskom.
"With the winter chill enveloping most parts of the country, space heating will become the second highest cost-pusher of an average household’s electricity bill," Eskom said in a statement on Wednesday.
"Space heating and the geyser constitute 55% of an average household’s energy usage per month, with the geyser being responsible for 39% of the electricity costs," the utility said.
"If everyone were to switch off energy intensive appliances such as electric geysers and pool pumps during high electricity usage times between 17:00 and 21:00, this could save up to 2 940 MW, and avoid the implementation of load shedding.
"This is enough to free up five units of a six-pack power station and power three cities the size of Durban, Port Elizabeth and Bloemfontein."
Other tips by Eskom:
Customers can help minimise the risk of load shedding, and also keep tabs on their electricity bill this winter by following some of these energy saving tips:
- Use electric heaters that are controlled by thermostats
- Electric blankets are the cheapest way of warming the bed, but don’t keep them on throughout the night. Turn your electric blanket on for an hour or two just before bedtime to heat it up and switch it off
- Only heat rooms that you and your family are going to use
- Insulate ceilings and make sure that there are no gaps that let cold air into your house to improve the efficiency of your heater.
Other ways of reducing electricity demand include:
- Never leaving appliances such as TVs, computers and entertainment systems on standby mode. Remaining on standby mode, these appliances still use up to 15% of the electricity that they would normally use
- Switching off lights in unoccupied rooms and replacing incandescent light bulbs with energy saving compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) or light emitting diodes (LEDs)
- Taking a shower instead of taking a bath (a shower uses a lot less water than a bath) - also consider installing an energy- and water-efficient shower head.
- Also remember to unplug cellphone chargers and other chargers when your device is fully charged.
- Cover you pool and reduce you pool pump filtering to one cycle per day during winter
"If every household makes some minor changes, we can lower our collective electricity use by 10%. This means that we will reduce our monthly energy costs, reduce the demand on the national grid while at the same time doing our bit to save the planet," said Eskom.
