Eskom was able to use emergency repairs and power reserves to keep the lights on for President Cyril Ramaphosa’s state of the nation address (Sona), but continued breakdowns in its system meant it could not avoid stage 3 load shedding this weekend.

Speaking to the Sunday Times, Eskom chief operating officer Jan Oberholzer said that even though Eskom was able to repair certain units at its power stations, a shortage of capacity and overuse of its reserves meant that load shedding would continue.

He added that “an optimistic approach to Eskom’s maintenance and ruined expectations behind certain repairs” led to the sudden stage 3 load shedding.

“I would like to categorically state that we did not manipulate the system for the president’s address,” he said.

Oberholzer added that on Wednesday night (12 February) Eskom was feeling fairly confident about the country’s power supply and was no longer load shedding.

However, by Thursday evening units had begun faltering at various power stations across the country.

Oberholzer said this unpredictability was going to lead to “some good weeks and some bad weeks in the near future”.

Stage 3 load shedding

Eskom said that load shedding will be pushed to stage 3 on Saturday (15 February), and will be extended to 05h00 on Monday (17 February).

Customers can find their various load shedding schedules on their local metro or municipal websites, where applicable, or from Eskom directly.

For those living in South Africa’s major metros, here is where you can check to see when you will be hit:

For access to other load shedding schedules, Eskom has made them available on loadshedding.eskom.co.za.

Smartphone users can also download the app EskomSePush to receive push notifications when load shedding is implemented, as well as the times the area you are in will be off.

Read: Load shedding pushed to stage 3 – and will last even longer