Eskom Implements Stage 3 Loadshedding, Lasts Through Monday

Eskom has announced that Stage 3 loadshedding will be implemented from today at 14:00 until Monday, 10 March 2025 at 05:00. 

This decision comes after a loss of 2700MW in the past 14 hours. This includes Koeberg Unit 2, which was taken offline after being brought back on Wednesday, and two Kusile Units whose coal operations went sub-optimal following adverse weather in the area. Higher levels of planned maintenance outages, aimed at winter preparation and meeting regulatory and environmental licensing requirements are still underway.

The constrained capacity resulted in the increased reliance on emergency reserves during this week, which makes it necessary to focus on replenishing these critical resources during the weekend in preparation for the business week.

Eskom is focused on deploying extra engineering resources to expedite the repair of units currently offline. It is anticipated that 6200MW will be restored to service by Monday’s evening peak.

The events that triggered Stage 3 loadshedding occurred while the system was already under strain.

Eskom’s Summer Outlook, published on 26 August 2024, remains unchanged.

“We reiterate our commitment to ensuring that South Africa is in no way returning to the levels of loadshedding that we experienced in 2023.  Two years into delivering the generation recovery plan, that will bring an end loadshedding, we are at a challenging time and the full force of our highly skilled engineering resources are deployed and focussed,” said Eskom’s Group Executive Generation, Bheki Nxumalo.

“We have had some delays in returning units that previously tripped back to the grid, as well as to the return of three units that have been on longer-term outage that will bring back 2500MW to the grid, which will happen over the coming weeks,” said the Eskom’s Group Executive for Generation, Bheki Nxumalo.

“Loadshedding is a painful reminder of the past and situations such as this drive our resolve to double down and stay the course to end loadshedding.  We again apologise to the nation for this temporary setback.  We have to keep our focus on intensive maintenance as evidenced by year-to-date (1 April 2024 to 27 February 2025) loadshedding that was suspended for 325 days (7 871 hours), compared to 32 days (2 103 hours) in the same period last year. Electricity supply was available 98% of the time, compared to just 9.6% last year, that was a result of the deep maintenance we did in summer 2023/2024,” said Eskom Group Chief Executive, Dan Marokane.

“We maintain our guidance that loadshedding is largely behind us due to structural improvements in the generation fleet.  While baseload capacity remains constrained, our generation recovery plan is addressing this challenge. Achieving our goal of a stable energy availability factor of 65% -70% will significantly reduce the risk of loadshedding,” added Marokane.

Eskom will continue to monitor the situation and provide updates as needed.