Dear colleagues and students

Eskom's chief executive Andre de Ruyter announced yesterday that there is a good chance that the power utility could be forced to introduce stage 6 load shedding on Tuesday, 28 June, due to a significant deterioration of its load generations capacity overnight. As we now know, that was indeed the case.

Stage 6 doubles the frequency of power cuts as opposed to stage 3. This means outages are scheduled over four-day periods for four hours at a time.

Considering this, we must conserve energy as it will have a significant impact on the supply of diesel. We therefore inform staff and students currently on campus that there will only be generating capacity available at essential (SET faculty) buildings from 17:00 on the days that we have stages 4–6 loadshedding. On these days, non-essential buildings (list to be circulated) will have no electricity from 17:00 onwards.

Eskom has not announced how long stage 6 will last, and additional measures required to mitigate this risk will be announced as soon as we receive an update on this matter.

We would like to urgently request staff and students to switch off all non-essential equipment, such as air conditioners, compressors, etc. immediately until further notice.

For urgent enquiries or issues, please contact Nadeem Gafieldien at 082 307 7755.

Best regards

Prof Stan du Plessis

Chief Operating Officer: Stellenbosch University