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South Africa may experience stage 5 load shedding
- Eskom faces huge infrastructure challenges
- No end in sight says, expert
Energy expert Chris Yelland has said, South Africa may witness stage 5 of load shedding by the state-owned electricity company, Eskom. While speaking on eNCA, Yelland said that South Africans have come to accept the constant load shedding as normal. He also stated that, with Eskom’s plan to decommission six units at its dilapidated coal power stations for maintenance, the country might witness the implementation of stage 4-5 of the load shedding schedule. Stage 5 involves outages lasting more than seven hours per day. Eskom, in recent times, has asked consumers to cut electricity consumption to reduce pressure on its already weak network infrastructure.
In addition to the incessant load shedding by Eskom, the National Energy Regulator of South Africa (NERSA) has published a request from Eskom for the recovery of R8.4 billion in electricity tariffs in 2022, meaning a tariff increase is imminent. Eskom argues that the increase is necessary due to under-recovery in 2020/2021. NERSA is expected to rule on this request in August.