As of December 2019, Eskom has published eight phases for the disengagement, with each phase representing 1000 MWe demand removed through controlled shutdowns in sections of the National Grid, according to pre-set schedules. This year, to 10 May, South African utility Eskom has implemented 31 days of blackouts, or load shedding as it is known locally, up from 26 days during the same period a year ago.
Six power units returned to service over the last 24 hours, and with another three units due back Thursday, Eskom said it will be able to scale back its implementation of load shedding to phase three starting Wednesday evening. The utility will switch to Stage 2 load shedding starting from 10 Thursday, and is likely to stay at that level through Friday night. Stage-2 load shedding is set to remain in place from 9am until 11pm today because of the capacity shortage, which was confirmed on Wednesday night by Eskom, having implemented the same measures all throughout Wednesday.
Power utility Eskom announced stage 2 load shedding would take place Sunday evening — and phase 3 load shedding on Monday and Tuesday of the following week. Eskom has announced that Eskom will implement phase 2 load shedding on Friday (10th July) because of an increasing stress on the nations electricity systems. On 5 December 2014, Eskom began the large phase 3 load shedding across South Africa following the shutdown of two power plants on 4 November (of said year) because of diesel shortages.
South Africa switched from phase four load shedding to phase three on Wednesday night, after Eskom brought back a number of generation units. Meanwhile, South African Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan has ruled out declaring an emergency situation on Eskom, which has been beset by almost constant failures of units in its electricity plants, with the latest one leading to a week-long phase-2 load shedding. Proving a point, Eskom has announced that it will keep implementing load shedding until it has at least 4,000MW more generation capacity, which will give it room to remove some of its units for scheduled maintenance.
Eskom says that if there is more load to shed than what has been scheduled for phases 1, 2, 3 and 4, National Control will order further, unscheduled, load shedding. Stage 2 will double the frequency of Stage 1, meaning that six times over the course of a four-day period, you will be scheduled to have loads shed six times each two hours, or six times over the course of eight days, four hours each. Stage 3 will increase the frequency of Stage 2 by 50%, meaning that nine times over the course of four days, you will be scheduled to have loads shed two hours each, or nine times over the course of eight days, four hours each. In the eight-stage system, Stage 3 is the power-outage level where Eskom has implemented seven-and-a-half hours rolling blackouts throughout South Africa.
