Find ways to keep warm‚ Eskom warns

Eskom started the weekend with stage 1 load shedding until 10 on Friday night.

This‚ according to the power utility’s now-standard press release‚ “is due to increased electricity demand and a shortage of generation capacity resulting from technical faults at some of our power station units”.

“#PowerAlert. Stage 1 #load–shedding will be implemented from 08:30 to 22:00 today. Please find energy efficient ways to keep warm.”

While Eskom committed itself to “provide regular updates on the status of the power system through all the media platforms”‚ media outlets can no longer provide power predictions for the coming days after the company discontinued the issuing of “system status bulletins” in May.

Twitter user @ThaCido88 was anxious what he thought would be hear Eskom’s inevitable next update: “@Eskom–SA then if this is stage 1‚ then stage 2 will be from what time to what? Or is it only stage 1 only today?”

“System status bulletins” provided bi-weekly predictions of the capacity available to Eskom and the predicted peak demand.