The Buffalo City Metropolitan Municipality [BCCM] in the Eastern Cape released a statement over the weekend saying “all municipalities” have been instructed to adjust their load shedding schedules to factor in the new stages the utility has added.

While load shedding used to go from stage 1 to stage 4, four new stages were introduced in November 2018.

While The Citizen was one of several publications which reported on this development at the time, it seems to have gone largely unnoticed, as the introduction of stage 6 load shedding for the first time on December 9 last year was met with shock and surprise by many South Africans.

“As we are all aware, load shedding is part of our daily lives. With generation and maintenance challenges growing, all municipalities have been advised to review their current practices and adjust the load shedding schedule from stages 1-3 upwards to stages 1 to 8,” the statement says.

This will require the introduction of more blocks to the system, it adds.

“Each stage representing a curtailment of 5% of the load, that saying stage 8 will, therefore, equate to 40% of the load.

“Currently BCMM operates 14 blocks this will increase to 19 blocks.

“Currently BCMM load sheds blocks for two hours. This will increase to three hours per block (maybe reviewed to four hours at a later stage).

According to the statement, businesses which are not “embedded (on a spur) within the system had the opportunity of been excluded from load shedding by taking measures of reducing their consumption by a guaranteed 20%”.

The statement said that while this would remain the case between stages 1 to 4, these businesses would be load shed between stages 5 and 8.

According to the municipality, overlapping of blocks would take place above stage 4 to ensure no more than 20% of the load comes back at any one time, as this would damage equipment.

More information is available here, according to the statement.

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