Industry wanted guidelines for up to Stage 16 load shedding, even though it's unlikely - Nersa

Guidelines for up to Stage 16 load shedding were requested by industry stakeholders, with the aim of reducing the risk of human error in an emergency situation, according to Vally Padayachee. Padayachee is chairperson of the management committee for the NRS Association, which led the development of a set of guidelines or code of practice for load shedding beyond Stage 8.

He was speaking at a media briefing on Tuesday about the code that was recently approved by the National Energy Regulator of South Africa (Nersa).

The code provides a set of tools that can be used by Eskom's system operator (which manages the grid) and electricity distributors (both municipal and from Eskom) when implementing load shedding - up to Stage 16. Stage 16 involves reducing demand by 80%. So load shedding would last for 32 hours, or virtually the whole day, Padayachee said.