We don’t want to say we told you so, but we definitely saw this coming. Eskom has announced that load shedding will continue from this morning (Tuesday 26 October 2021) to 5am on Saturday 30 October 2021. Best bust out the power banks and MiFi routers.
According to a statement, while the power utility has managed to restore units at the Kusile, Matimba and Arnot, breakdowns still amount to 13,333MW, with an additional 5,548MW worth of capacity set aside for planned maintenance. Furthermore, delays in returning several other stations to service have hampered the utility’s ability to replenish emergency generation reserves. Not exactly a story we haven’t heard before.
Eskom-plications
Stage 2 loadshedding will be implemented from 09:00 on Tuesday until 05:00 on Saturday pic.twitter.com/CBYXQsyKAv
— Eskom Hld SOC Ltd (@Eskom_SA) October 26, 2021
The service provider (or non-provider) says it should have Koeberg Unit 1 back up and running by the weekend, but we wouldn’t count on it. We’re not saying there’s no chance of it happening, but if you keep your expectations low you can’t be disappointed.
“[We] would like to apologise for the inconvenience caused by the implementation of load shedding, and requests the public reduce the usage of electricity in order to help us through the constraints,” reads the statement. How trite.
Johannesburg may have thought they’d be dodging this particular bullet given City Power’s recent Twitter history. But the municipal utility appears to have backtracked on its staunch affirmation that it would not be load shedding, and is instead currently, alongside Eskom, exploring ways in which this additional capacity could shield Joburg from load shedding in the future.
If you’d like to check out your load shedding schedule, head over this way. Or, if for some wild reason you haven’t done it already, go download EskomSePush. Everything’s better with an app.