F5.5G Leap-forward Development of Broadband in Africa The Africa Broadband Forum 2024 (BBAF 2024) was successfully held in Cape Town, South Africa recently, under…
Prepare for 4, 6 to 8 hours without power as Stage 6 load shedding hits
Eskom has implemented stage 6 load shedding as of 9 pm on Tuesday until 5 am on Wednesday morning with stage 4 expected to kick in daily from 5 am until 4 pm, going forward.
How many hours is stage 6 load shedding?
Residents can expect between 6, 8, and 12 hours without power if we factor in other stage schedules, coupled with Stage 6.
That’s a frustrating entire productive day without power when we look at the eight hours employees spend behind a desk to deliver.
The escalated stage in load shedding was due to the failure of eight generating units and the excessive reliance on open-cycle gas turbines and pumped storage generation that rapidly depleted reserves.
About 6 000 megawatts are dropped from the grid as a measure to avoid total collapse, at this stage.
Stage 6 requires up to 6 000 megawatts to be shed from the national grid with around 6 hours of no power for most residents in the country.
Eskom will most likely implement two hour cycles to facilitate the almost six hour power outage in the same manner it did when South African experienced power cuts over two years ago.
Although load shedding will shift back to stage 4, this stage doubles the frequency of stage 2 power cuts which means load shedding 12 times over a four day period for two hours at a time, or 12 times over an eight day period for four hours at a time.
Stage 4 allows as much as 4 000MW of the national load to be shed.
This means South African’s can brace themselves to be affected for up to four and a half hours at a time.
Load shedding in cycles could mean most of the day without power, a dire situation for most retail outlets including banks and other institutions heavily reliant of power.
South African’s can brace themselves for a dark few months as the power utility buckles to keep a fraction of the power on, with naysayers arguing that the situation is most likely going to get worse.
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