Eskom announces Stage 2 load shedding today from 4pm

Don’t take too much time deciphering which lockdown level and which load shedding stage South Africa is currently in, we’ll help you out.

Following Pres. Ramaphosa’s family meeting last night, South Africa currently stands in Level 2 lockdown. And as of 4PM on Monday, 31 May, the country is plunged into Stage 2 load shedding.

Announced a mere two hours before the next stage of load shedding is slated to commence, Eskom published an official statement detailing why the country’s residents will face more outages during one of the country’s coldest days of the year so far.

Eskom’s ‘high breakdowns’

“The load shedding has been caused by the higher demand as a result of the cold front setting in much earlier than expected, as well as high breakdowns of generation units,” the statement reads.

“Breakdowns currently total 14 560 MW of capacity, while another 2 300MW is unavailable due to planned maintenance. Some generation units are expected to return to service starting this evening, which would help ease the strain. This, however, is not sufficient to eliminate the high probability of loadshedding for the rest of the week.”

The latest rolling blackout will commence at 16:00 on Monday 31 May and conclude at 05:00 on Tuesday 1 June. Brace for a cold, dark week ahead and download a load shedding notifier app.