Less than two weeks into the new year and South Africans have already spent more than 200 hours in darkness.
More darker days are on the horizon after Eskom announced on Wednesday that stage-six loadshedding will continue indefinitely from 4pm.
Eleven power generating units have broken down since Tuesday morning, said the cash-strapped state-owned entity.
In a statement on Wednesday, Eskom said the escalation of power cuts to the dreaded higher stage was due to severe capacity constraints, and noted that it will continue to manage the limited emergency generation reserves to supplement generation capacity.
On Tuesday, Eskom announced that loadshedding will be rolled out at stage six only in the evenings, after stage four had been implemented from 5am until 4pm.
The public has since been urged to use electricity sparingly and exercise patience and tolerance during loadshedding.
In December, Sunday World wrote that there are fears that loadshedding in 2023 could move to unprecedented levels and cause even more disruption to the economy and the lives of ordinary South Africans.
The concerns stemmed from the failure of the power utility to ensure maximum generation capacity from its plants.
In addition, Eskom has run out of money to burn diesel; the use of poor-quality coal supply is affecting the power utility’s ability to produce power; and Koeberg nuclear power station’s 920MW unit 1 needs to go offline for maintenance and refuelling.
Chris Yelland, the MD of energy consultancy EE Business Intelligence, said at the time that several factors were hindering Eskom’s generation capacity.
Energy analyst Ted Blom also said at the time that Eskom was losing generation capacity due to its use of poor-quality coal.
“Eskom has not invested in its long-term coal supply since 2002. As a result, most of the existing coal mines are battling to supply the required coal because they have been unable to develop their mines,” Blom said.
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