Eskom has announced that South Africans will get a slight reprieve from their load shedding on Sunday morning.
The ongoing blackout will be downgraded to stage 5 from 5am on Sunday.
Phase 6 was announced earlier
Former Eskom CEO Andre de Ruyter said on Monday that the 6th phase of load shedding will take place until Wednesday. However, South Africans are experiencing higher power outages until Saturday.
The struggling power utility said this was due to the breakdown of generating units at the Arnot, Hendrina, Lethabo and Majuba, and Camden power stations.
It also said there was a coal constraint in Lethabo. This was after coal could not be delivered due to heavy rains in the region.
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Stage 8 relieves the burden?
It appears that the load shedding situation is worse than what Eskom is doing.
In the past week, Eskom appears to have implemented stage 8 load shedding without informing the public.
According to a tweet on Tuesday afternoon from Eskom spokesperson, Sikonathi Mantshantsha, Eskom’s peak feedback shows that 7 045MW of load shedding has been done.
Technically, this is equivalent to a stage 8 blackout.
Stage 8 is the highest level of burden the country has yet experienced.
NOW Read: SA is technically at stage 8 load shedding even though Eskom says stage 6