Stage 1 load shedding kicks in this morning

It came into effect at 9am and is expected to stay in effect until 10pm tonight. Eskom also says it will be working on replenishing its emergency reserves this weekend. 

The power producer is enforcing Stage One load shedding in an attempt to take the strain off the national power grid. This is due to unexpected outages at a number of the utility's power generating plants, a shortage of coal and low water levels at several water pump storage facilities. 

Stage Two load shedding was also carried out across the country yesterday. Earlier this week the parastatal warned that this could continue until March next year. 

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Eskom's Dikatso Mothae is urging communities to refer to their load shedding schedules so they know when their areas will be without electricity.

"We will also use our emergency reserves. For instance at our pump storage scheme the dam levels are low so we need to re-pump to fill them up so we have energy for next week. So we will be working on replenishing those reserves over this weekend and it is part of the reason we are load shedding on Saturday and Sunday," Mothae said.

You can find your area's loadshedding schedules, here.

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