Eskom announced on Sunday that rolling blackouts will be reduced to stage 1 from 23:00 on Sunday night until 05:00 Monday morning, after which stage 2 will return until further notice.
In its latest system status report, Eskom reports a high likelihood of load-shedding for the next three months with severe power shortages expected. The official three-month outlook for demand and generating capacity shows that South Africans can expect blackouts every single week until mid-April.
During six of the coming 13 weeks, Eskom forecasts that it will “definitely” be short of between 1 000 megawatts (MW) and 2 000MW to meet its reserve margin and “possibly demand”. This comes as the utility was forced to implement Stage 2 load shedding from midday on Thursday 14 January as it lost four generation units – two at Kusile and one each at Kriel and Duvha, reports Moneyweb.
Experts are concerned that since 2007, load-shedding has been getting worse over the years.
The utility said it would give an update sometime on Monday afternoon. In the meantime, Eskom is calling on citizens to reduce electricity consumption.