Eskom has announced that load shedding will be implemented from 4pm to 5am every evening “until further notice”.

This as the power utility continues to battle breakdowns at power stations and for the recovery of emergency generation capacity.

“The nightly implementation of load shedding is mainly due to the need to preserve emergency generation reserves owing to a high level of breakdowns. Eskom will publish a further update as soon as there are any significant changes.

“Load shedding is implemented only as a last resort in view of the shortage of generation capacity and the need to attend to breakdowns,” the power utility said.

By Sunday afternoon, some 14 107MW of capacity was offline due to breakdowns with a further 4963MW out on planned maintenance.

“[On Sunday morning] a generation unit at Kriel Power Station was returned to service while the return to service of a unit at Majuba Power Station has been delayed,” Eskom said.

Source: South African Government News Agency