Rolling power blackouts are back after more than a week of reprieve, Eskom announced on Tuesday, saying stage-two loadshedding will resume at 5pm today until Monday at 5am.
The power utility, which said it implements loadshedding as a last resort to protect the national grid, cited a shortage of generation capacity as the reason for the looming week-long blackouts.
“Since yesterday [Monday], a generation unit each at Lethabo, Tutuka, Ingula, Drakensberg, Arnot, as well as two units each at Hendrina and Matla power stations suffered breakdowns,” said Eskom in a statement.
“Eskom will continue to monitor the system and implement any changes as required. We expect to return as many of these units to service as possible over the next few days. We also expect to rely on the use of emergency generating reserves to limit the stage of loadshedding during this period.”
Eskom added: “We currently have 3 875MW on planned maintenance, while another 15 067MW of capacity is unavailable due to breakdowns.”
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