Cape Town - Electricity service provider Eskom has announced that it will be suspending load shedding tonight at midnight, but would be reinstating power cuts at 5am tomorrow.
In a statement, Eskom said that upon re-implementing load shedding, South African households and businesses would experience load shedding stage 1 from 5am to 4pm that afternoon, after which it will shift up its schedule to stage 2.
Eskom spokesperson Kyle Cookson said: “Load shedding will be suspended at midnight tonight, and resume with stage 1 at 5am until 4pm on Monday, November 28. Stage 2 load shedding will then be implemented daily from 4pm throughout the night until 5am the following morning, until further notice.”
Cookson, however, also revealed that Eskom anticipates that it will not have to implement load shedding during the day from Tuesday onwards.
He said: “Eskom will publish a further update as soon as there are any significant changes. The continued implementation of load shedding is mainly due to the high level of breakdowns and the limited emergency generation reserves.”
Eskom currently has 5 032MW on planned maintenance, while another 16 390MW capacity is not available due to breakdowns.
Load shedding is implemented only as a last resort because of the shortage of generation capacity and the need to attend to breakdowns, Eskom said.