South Africans will spend the whole weekend in darkness as Eskom has implemented stage 6 of the rolling blackouts since midday on Friday and is expected to be in place until Monday morning.
In a short statement, the power utility said the ramping up of load shedding was due to a loss of five generating units and emergency reserves in the past 24 hours.
“Eskom teams are working tirelessly to ensure that these additional generating units are returned to service as soon as possible,” said
Unplanned outages are currently at 15 901 megawatts of generating capacity, while the capacity out of service for planned maintenance is 5 822 megawatts.
Eskom said it will closely monitor the system and communicate any changes to load shedding should it be required.
Meanwhile, Electricity Minister Dr Kgosientsho Ramokgopa has apologised for the current blackout. He was speaking during a media briefing in Pretoria together with Eskom Executives.
He said some of the reasons for the current situation is that the power utility overcommitted.
“What explains this is the fact that we had overcommitted our reserves so for purposes of protecting the grid.
We need to ensure that we continue to protect the reserves so we will not engage them at heightened intensity,” explained Ramokgopa.
Eskom Group Executive for Generation Bheki Nxumalo who addressed the same briefing, said they’ve recorded a high demand for electricity from Thursday which also led to stage 6.