[imagesource: 123RF / Jakub Gojda]

Welcome to another week of wondering when you will and will not have power.

Proudly brought to you by the ANC, with assistance from the millions of South Africans who continue to vote them into power.

Don’t forget that many of our esteemed ministers don’t experience load shedding at home. Their power is kept on at all times while you’re eating at 6PM because you don’t have power until 10:30PM.

EskomSePush was kept busy this weekend with pinging alerts of escalating stages of load shedding and regularly shifting schedules.

Meanwhile, every device was plugged in and charged to the max so that the Springboks’ Saturday night clash could be watched and Netflix and chill remained a possibility.

According to Eskom chief executive officer Andre de Ruyter, via BusinessTech, a double whammy of failing units and running out of reserves meant that stage six was necessary:

Group chief operating officer Jan Oberholzer, meanwhile, said that there is no certainty for the week ahead, and stage 6 will remain in place until the necessary capacity has been restored…

The Eskom chief said that 1,590MW are expected to return by Sunday evening, and 3,500MW by should be back by Monday evening.

However, that energy won’t slip straight back into the grid as there can be trips during the process.

This was echoed by Oberholzer, who said that there are, unfortunately, no commitments that can be made at this stage. He said that 9,000MW of capacity is expected to return to the grid during the week, but stage 6 load shedding will stay in place until the necessary capacity has returned.

Eskom bigwigs admitted that at one stage, they had considered putting the country permanently on stage two load shedding, instead of introducing it when the power system faces strain.

That was deemed unnecessary as it wouldn’t actually add that much extra scope for the necessary maintenance to take place.

South Africans, stretched to breaking point, made their thoughts known on social media:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Siv Ngesi (@sivngesi)

Insert obligatory joke about stage eight, where someone from Eskom comes around and blows out your candles.

This video from News24 sums up the total disaster that September has been thus far:

For the week ahead, we can expect stage six to remain with the possibility of escalating power cuts.

Here’s EWN:

Eskom said that its teams were working around the clock to avoid a total system collapse by implementing stage 6 power cuts…

Oberholzer said that stage 6 power cuts will persist, with heavy rolling blackouts expected for the week.

The utility said that it hoped to bring 18 units which were the equivalent of 9,000 megawatts back to service in the next five to six days.

Capetonians, who have grown used to being at least one load shedding stage lower than the rest of the country, suffered over the weekend.

There will be some respite this week, with a release from the City of Cape Town last night outlining those efforts:

Urgent load-shedding update – 18 September 2022
Eskom Stage 6 load-shedding confirmed until 05:00 on Tuesday, 20 September.

City customers
Stage 4: 05:00 – 20:00
Stage 5: 20:00 – 22:00

Updates to follow. #CTInfo pic.twitter.com/HgyNAuKgNj

— City of Cape Town (@CityofCT) September 18, 2022

Small mercies.

Do you know what would be great? If somebody from the top echelons of government could put out a message that when the traffic robots are down, we go two cars at a time for the four-way stop.

One car at a time is just silly and inefficient. We can do better. Who’s in charge of our roads?

Landed in Qatar Doha good morning 🙏

— FIKILE MBALULA | MR FIX (@MbalulaFikile) September 18, 2022

Oh, never mind, then.

Also, please do every single neighbourhood Facebook group a favour and encourage your older relatives and friends to download EskomSePush.

We aren’t affiliated with them at all but we are tired of seeing people asking for updates on every single group non-stop throughout the day.

Happy Monday.

[sources:bustech&ewn]