JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) -South African state power utility Eskom said on Monday that scheduled power cuts would resume from 9 p.m. (1900 GMT) after more breakdowns at its ailing coal-fired power stations.
Eskom had only suspended outages on Sunday evening, when it said its generation capacity had recovered.
But, highlighting the fragility of the country’s power infrastructure, the company said since midnight it had lost a unit each at the Camden, Kusile, Duvha and Matla coal plants, while the return of a unit at Kusile and two units at Majuba had been delayed.
Eskom said the power cuts would be at the “Stage 2” level, requiring up to 2,000 megawatts (MW) to be shed from the national grid, and last until 5 a.m. on Tuesday.
“Further breakdowns could force Eskom to implement loadshedding sooner or to extend the loadshedding beyond Tuesday morning,” it said in a statement, using a term for power cuts.
Eskom said more than 16,000 MW of its roughly 46,000 MW nominal capacity was offline because of breakdowns and a further 5,000 MW for planned maintenance.
(Reporting by Alexander Winning; Editing by Emma Rumney, Kirsten Donovan)
