South Africans are in for some reprieve from load shedding from next week after Eskom announced that it will be reduced to stage 5 at 5am on Monday.
Thereafter, stage 4 load shedding will be implemented at 5am on Tuesday for the remainder of the week, the group said.
Eskom added that it will provide updates if there are significant changes to the grid.
This comes after the power utility announced stage 6 load shedding on Friday morning after the breakdowns of eight generating units.
This has led to the use of open cycle gas turbines and pumped storage generation.
“The inability to pump water overnight at the pumped storage schemes and the low diesel levels has resulted in critically low emergency reserves which needs to be conserved.”
City Power on Saturday afternoon confirmed getting a request from SAPS NatJoints to exclude the Nasrec precinct from power cuts for the duration of the ANC conference.
City Power spokesperson Isaac Mangena said: “The exclusion is to assist security operations in the area due to the presence of high security risk persons such as the president of the country, deputy president and government ministers.
“The request, fortunately came at a time when Eskom granted City Power a reprieve from load shedding, which enables us to, on a daily rotational basis, exempt certain substations from load shedding.
“Nasrec precinct is fed from two substations- Crown and Robertsham- and at any given bout of load shedding, one of them is switched off. Robertsham is excluded from load shedding on Saturday which is scheduled from 8am to 12.30pm and from 4pm to 6.30 pm,” he said.
President Cyril Ramaphosa told more than 4,000 delegates at the conference on Friday night: “The insecurity of the electricity supply continues to be one of the greatest impediments and risks to economic recovery in our country.”
Source: Business Day, Moneyweb, The Citizen, Business Tech, image from Twitter: @StarFMNews919
