JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – South Africa’s Eskom will be forced to increase planned power cuts this weekend after additional breakdowns overnight, the utility said on Saturday.
Having planned cuts of up to 3,000 megawatts (MW), Eskom said it would have to increase these to Stage 4 cuts of up to 4,000 MW until 0500 on Monday.
Stage 4 cuts mean that homes and businesses without their own generators will not have power for six hours a day, impacting the use of appliances and trading.
“Regretfully, due to additional breakdowns overnight, Eskom was unable to replenish the emergency generation reserves, which has worsened the current generation capacity constraints,” it said.
It added that the escalated power cuts are meant to replenish the emergency reserves in order to contain power cuts to lower levels next week.
Eskom’s aging power stations run mostly on coal and are highly prone to faults.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa’s government has tried to reform Eskom to make it more efficient, but progress has been slow.
Out of a fleet total capacity of about 46,000 MW, Eskom currently has 5,579 MW on planned maintenance and 16,599 MW unavailable due to breakdowns.
(Reporting by Nqobile Dludla; editing by Jason Neely)
