Eskom has denied telling municipalities that stage 8 load shedding is imminent, describing media articles claiming this to be “erroneous and incorrect”.

In a statement on Tuesday, the power utility said that while it has developed contingency plans for a severe supply constraints this does not mean that it is planning to implement stage 8 load shedding, which would see up to 8 000MW shed from the national grid.The highest level of power cuts Eskom has yet implemented is stage 6.

“When Stage 6 load shedding was implemented in December, not all metros or municipalities had published their extended load shedding schedules,” said Eskom in a statement. “The Association of Municipal Electricity Utilities therefore engaged most of its members to confirm their compliance to the code – i.e. whether stages 5 to 8 had been published by those Metro’s that had not yet done so.”The utility said in a separate statement that it is not planning power cuts on Tuesday, as emergency reserves would likely be adequate to supplement a shortfall in generation capacity on should the need arise.

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