(Reuters) – South African state power utility Eskom said it would implement “Stage 2” rotational power cuts between 1700 and 2200 local time (1500 and 2000 GMT) on Monday and every evening till Thursday night at the same time due to a shortage of generation capacity.
Economic growth in Africa’s most industrialised nation has been constrained for more than a decade by Eskom’s electricity outages.
In a statement, Eskom also warned that there was a high risk of more power cuts in the coming weeks.
Eskom’s ageing coal fleet is highly prone to faults, and government plans to add additional capacity to the national grid have been sluggish.
“Stage 2” scheduled outages require up to 2,000 megawatts to be shed from the national grid.
(Reporting by Bhargav Acharya in Bengaluru; Editing by Alexander Winning)
