Minister of Electricity Kgosientso Ramokgopa briefs the media following the recent load shedding. Picture: Oupa Mokoena / Independent Newspapers
South Africa’s state owned power utility, Eskom, announced on Monday that it will be lowering stage 6 load shedding to stage 4.
"This follows the successful recovery of all five units at Majuba, two units at Camden, and one unit at Medupi since Saturday, totaling eight out of ten generation units that had tripped this weekend. Additionally, emergency reserves replenishment is progressing well," Eskom said in a statement.
This came after Eskom implemented rolling blackouts on Saturday afternoon with stage 3 load shedding.
By the time South Africans woke up on Sunday, they realised that Eskom had ramped up load shedding to stage 6 in the early hours of the morning.
On Sunday, the Minister of Energy and Electricity, Dr Kgosientsho Ramokgopa apologised to South Africans during a media briefing on Eskom’s energy generation status.
He said, “Please accept our sincerest apologies. With the greatest level of humility, I want to say to the country that we regret that there is a setback.”
"We suffered a setback on February 1, 2025, after over 300 days of consecutive supply of electricity and in uninterrupted fashion and again now. We are coming back to you while we have another bout of load shedding which has a greater intensity," the minister added.
Ramokgopa said the load shedding was due to five generation units being lost at Majuba power station, Eskom's second-largest power plant.
"This resulted in us initiating Stage 3 load shedding to allow us to replenish the reserves, to allow the team to understand what the root cause was at Majuba, and have an appreciation of how long it will take for us to return those units. At about 01:30 am at Camden, we lost four units, which is another outlier. The constellation of that resulted in us upping the levels of load shedding to Stage 6. We have been able to record some successes in return of the units," he said.
On Monday, Eskom added that the return of these units follows the identification of the root causes of multiple unit trips, which were unrelated and purely technical, concerning electrical and control system issues in auxiliary parts of these power stations.
Yesterday, the minister of Electricity said that load shedding will come to an end by the end of the week.
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