On Friday, Eskom announced that Stage 2 load-shedding would be implemented from 9pm until 6am on Saturday, but early yesterday, it escalated the black-out programme to Stage 3, to run until tomorrow.
Stage 1 means that if the metro schedule has eight areas in a block to be affected, only four of the eight areas may be affected on day 1 and the other remaining four will be affected on day 2. When stage 2 is declared, the metro schedules are implemented in full. If there are eight areas in a block to be affected areas, all eight areas will be affected.
When Eskom’s grid is under severe pressure, Stage 3 is implemented. Stage 3 is completely out of the metro’s control and is implemented by Eskom to protect the national grid from collapsing.
In his State of the Nation Address (SONA) on Thursday, President Cyril Ramaphosa blamed the load-shedding on ‘Eskom’s inability’.
‘The load-shedding over the last few months has had a debilitating effect on our economy and our people. At its core, load-shedding is the inevitable consequence of Eskom’s inability over many years – due to debt, lack of capacity and state capture – to service its power plants.’
Speculation doing the rounds is that the suspension of load-shedding for SONA is the reason for Eskom having to ramp up load-shedding now.