‘Extremely high’ chance of stage 8 load shedding during winter
South Africans are going to have to brace themselves for the real possibility of stage 8 load shedding.
Eskom's acting group chief executive Calib Cassim briefed the media on Thursday morning on the state of the national grid, and winter's impact on their operations.
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"If the interventions that we have planned for the winter do not achieve the desired outcomes and your UCLF unplanned outages reach levels of 18 000 megawatts, then the likelihood of stage 8 load shedding during peaks is extremely high."
Cassim warns it's going to be a difficult few months.
He says Eskom is entering the coldest season of the year with 3 000 megawatts less capacity, compared to the same period last year.
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"The key objective is to keep our unplanned last factor at less than 15 000 megawatts.
"However, we know it's been a struggle to keep it at this level and in maintaining that level of 15 000 that then corresponds to much lower levels of load shedding during morning peaks, during the day and evening peaks."
