- Repairs on the City of Tshwane's electricity infrastructure are being hampered by Stage 6 load shedding.
- Tshwane Utility Services MMC Daryl Johnston lamented the indefinite implementation of Stage 6 load shedding.
- Stage 6 was implemented on Wednesday due to capacity constraints at Eskom.
City of Tshwane Utility Services MMC Daryl Johnston says constantly switching the electricity on and off for Stage 6 load shedding gives the electrical team "significantly less time" to work on repairs and maintenance.
Johnston was responding to the implementation of Stage 6 load shedding "until further notice" on Wednesday.
Ailing power utility Eskom said "severe capacity constraints" meant it would need to rely on emergency generation reserves.
On Thursday, Johnston said Stage 6 load shedding severely impacted the City's electricity infrastructure.
"Eskom has again announced that it would raise load shedding to Stage 6 from [21:00] last night (Wednesday) going on overnight each day from [16:00] in the afternoon until [05:00] the next morning until further notice.
"They've also subsequently increased that to Stage 6 permanently. Raised levels of load shedding are a crisis for our municipality, affecting both the condition of our electricity network as well as the ability to attend to outages."
He said Stage 6 load shedding meant regions of Tshwane would be without electricity two or three times a day for a minimum of six hours per day.
He added:
He said residents knew that load shedding could result in additional outages due to overloading of the network as well as vandalism and theft of the City's infrastructure.
"However, as the frequency of load shedding increases, City resources will be stretched by just switching areas on and off. The same teams that need to perform the switching also play a critical role in electricity network repair and maintenance work. They will have significantly less time to work on restoring electricity for non-load-shedding-related outages."
Just updated our #loadshedding calendar to cover all the years from 2015 to 2023: https://t.co/PYxgEhBzgH Each red block is a day with power cuts. Data via @EskomSePush #stage6 pic.twitter.com/HAoqQ9qcMc
— You can call me Al (@alastairotter) January 10, 2023
A graph by The Outlier, a data and visual storytelling media platform, shows the increase in the number of days of load shedding. Using load shedding prediction app EskomSePush, the platform has tracked the increase in blackouts from 2015 to 2023.
South Africa has experienced load shedding every day this year, compared to no load shedding in the same period in 2022. Load shedding was implemented every day in November and December.