Johannesburg’s City Power says the implementation of Stage 6 rolling blackouts by Eskom is placing massive pressure on already stressed electricity infrastructure and could lead to more power problems in the city.
Eskom is implementing Stage 6 rolling blackouts until 22:00 on Tuesday evening.
Due to unlawful industrial action, Stage 6 loadshedding will regretfully be implemented at 16:00 until 22:00 this evening. Stage 4 will then continue to be implemented until midnight. pic.twitter.com/BEJZLMcjr3
— Eskom Hld SOC Ltd (@Eskom_SA) June 28, 2022
Stage 4 will then be implemented until midnight, after which Stage 2 will occur until 05:00 on Wednesday morning.
Eskom has ascribed the implementation of Stage 6 to the unprotected workers’ strike.
City Power says Stage 6 means that households will be impacted for about 6 hours without power in three installments every 24 hours.
Spokesperson Isaac Mangena says they are not ready for Stage 6.
“Stage 4 load shedding (rolling blackouts) is already putting a serious strain on our network and resources are already getting depleted and strained. Unfortunately, with Stage 6, this means more problems for City Power and more problems for our customers. This means we will have to add more blocks to the schedule. Customers should also brace themselves to be load shed for more than three to four times daily. We are strained in terms of resources, substations that handle load shedding, some of them not even returning when we switch on during restoration.”
In the video below, Eskom says South Africans should brace themselves for longer periods of power cuts:
