South Africans must brace themselves for a dark and cold winter, with Eskom confirming that a new set of national standards proposes increasing load-shedding schedules to Stage 16.

The power utility company revealed to MyBroadband that this measure is being proposed to ensure that if load-shedding beyond Stage 8 is required, it can be carried out in an organised manner.

“The NRS048-9 Revision 2 describes load-shedding stages up to Stage 8 and obligates all network operators (distributors and municipalities) to develop, publish and implement these schedules when instructed to do so by the System Operator,” it said.

The Eskom System Operator is responsible for ensuring the stability of South Africa’s power grid and setting the level of load-shedding needed to do so.

“Beyond Stage 8, the System Operator will instruct each province to reduce by a fixed [megawatt] amount. This will be split between the Eskom Distribution network owner and the municipal network owners in each province,” stated Eskom.

“While this is effective in maintaining system stability, there are no predefined schedules of how this additional reduction should be rotated,” Eskom added.

“It is for this reason that NRS048-9 Revision 3 proposes load-shedding schedules up to Stage 16 in order to make load-shedding systematic and orderly,” the power utility said.

Until now, there was no official indication of how high the revised load-shedding schedules would go.

Eskom said the revised document also proposes more stages of load curtailment, although there are some practical limitations on industrial plants.

Meanwhile, businesstech.co.za has reported that speaking to ENCA, National Rationalised Specifications (NRS) chairperson, Vally Padaychee said that the tone on the revisions has also changed from having load shedding stages beyond Stage 8 as a precaution, to it becoming a more prudent measure, given the state of the grid.

“We do anticipate a move beyond stage 8, given the status of the current grid. We cannot guarantee that we won’t go beyond stage 6, let alone stage 8,” he said. This was in the context of the coming winter period and the declining state of generation.

“It’s being practical and pragmatic; we anticipate, given the winter period coming now and the status of generation and the grid, that we cannot guarantee that we will not go beyond stage 8, so edition 3 will further protect the national grid at a very high level,” he said.

The NRS regulations are an independent document used by power utilities.

“We do not take over the role of the System Operator. Through the standards, we supplement and complement what the operator does, so we assist them in protecting the grid,” he said.

Padaychee reiterated that Edition 1 of the regulations covered up to Stage 4 load shedding because the NRS did not anticipate going beyond Stage 4. In the latter years, however, when the country moved to Stage 5 and Stage 6, it had to make revisions up to Stage 8.

Under the current edition (Edition 2), if the system moves beyond Stage 8, the System Operator moves into emergency contingencies, which are open to human errors as they are not structured, he said.

With a new edition, these emergency contingencies will be eliminated as there will be a structured plan.