Load shedding schedules & timetables

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Timetables and load shedding schedules for Johannesburg, Pretoria, Cape Town, Durban and the rest of South Africa can be found on the following websites. Please note that effective midnight 21 January, two hour blackouts have been changed to 2.5 hour blackouts. see http://www.eskom.co.za/live/loadshed.php

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South Africa's state-owned electricity utility Eskom said on Tuesday that power rationing was likely to continue until at least July 2008.

Power rationing would impact Eskom's industrial, commercial and residential customers.

Eskom said it would look at enforcing immediate power rationing to improve system security and enable initial recovery of power feeding the national grid.

The move is part of the utility's National System Stabilisation Plan, which makes up the second of Eskom's three-phase plan to get South Africa's power supplies back on track after months of power outages.

Phase one of the three-pronged plan involves recovery of system security, which Eskom anticipates will take up to four weeks.

Eskom urgently needs demand to be reduced by 4000MW if it is to stabilise power supply.

The utility said the four weeks would be characterised by load-shedding, and while it hoped this phase would last only up to four weeks, this could be extended if coal supplies to its power stations were compromised in any way.

The second phase will be followed by the National System Stabilisation Plan, which will kick in at the end of February or beginning of March this year.

During this phase all electricity customers are expected to reduce consumption by at least 10 percent to free up at least 3000MW of power beyond the initial four-week period until 2010.

Eskom indicated if it could not get customers to reduce their demand, it would have to switch to pre-emptive load curtailment, where it would take out blocks of power for certain periods of time.

Customers would be informed of Eskom's plans, but have no choice over the outages.

Eskom expected pre-emptive load curtailment to improve predictability.

The stabilisation phase is seen as a way to get Eskom and its customers through the transition period between system security recovery and its power conservation programme, which will be applied for at least four years running up to 2012.

Power conservation, the final phase of Eskom's recovery plan, would see the introduction of a quota system that would be supported by either incentives or penalties for meeting or exceeding power use.

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Most of Cape Town was in the dark at 8.45 pm when an Eskom transmission line from a major sub station went down. This was not load shedding from a lack of power but a even more serious problem caused by AGING POOR INFRASTRUCTURE that has not been upgraded in over 30 years.

Brace yourself because we are in for a ride.

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If the power goes off, it is safer to simply turn off or even better, disconnect any electrical appliances that you were using. Keep 1 light switched ON to alert you when the power returns. When the power comes back on, it may do so with a momentary surge, which can damage electronically controlled appliances such as computers, TV sets, VCRs, DVDs, etc.

Remember to re-set time control clocks on all automatically controlled appliances, unless these are battery operated. Also remember that ESKOM
will try not accept responsibility for any appliances that are blown due ti power outages. Make sure that you are insured.