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We’ve heard talk of load shedding stage eight before, and here we are again.

The joke goes that when you hit stage eight, the government comes to your house and blows out your candles.

However, after 13 years of this nonsense, nobody ever being held accountable, and a global pandemic to boot, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to find any humour amongst the darkness.

As Eskom laid out in its most recent Weekly System Status Report, we’re on ‘code red’ for the next few months, and some of the predictions from energy experts are truly dire.

Ted Blom is never one to mince his words, and he says 2021 could be the worst year on record, with the potential for stage eight on the cards before winter wraps up.

On a recent Free Marketeers podcast, and in discussion with Free Market Foundation’s Chris Hattingh, he laid out why this could be the case.

MyBroadband has this summary:

Blom claimed that Eskom was understating the amount of power it was actually shedding from the national grid.

This, he said, is because Eskom already interrupts 2,000MW of supply to its big customers when it announces load-shedding for the general public…

Our current on and off stage two is technically stage three, but it’s the bigger numbers Blom trots out that are so worrying:

“I feel quite comfortable saying that I will not be surprised that between now and the end of winter we will experience Stage 6 load-shedding, pretty much for certain, and even Stage 8 or above is a possibility.”

Based on Eskom’s own forecasts, 2021 is going to be the worst year of load-shedding on record, Blom stated.

Stage eight, 13 years after load shedding first reared its ugly head.

Go on, open up EskomSePush and have a glance at what stage eight would look like.

In my area, it would mean a total of 13,5 hours without power over each of the next three days.

Generally, stage eight means going without power for 48 hours over a four-day period, which is 50% of the day.

In response to MyBroadband’s story, an Eskom spokesperson said that “while it endeavours to only load shed at Stage 4 or below and only when truly necessary, higher stages of load shedding could be required”.

Not exactly a strongly worded denial.

Over the weekend, Blom also appeared on CapeTalk, and said that Eskom “has again been grossly caught with their pants around their ankles”.

You can listen to that interview below:

[sources:mybroadband&capetalk]