South Africa has experienced its first scheduled power cuts in 10 months, with state power utility Eskom implementing “Stage 3” power cuts due to breakdowns at its coal-fired power stations.
The outages, which began on Friday at 5 p.m. and will last until at least midnight on Sunday, require up to 3,000 megawatts of capacity to be shed from the national grid.
According to Energy Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa, Eskom’s reserves have been depleted, and six units have gone offline at two of the company’s best-performing coal stations, Lethabo and Matimba, resulting in a loss of about 3,600 MW of capacity.
Ramokgopa described the return of power cuts as a “temporary setback” and expressed confidence that the country can still achieve its goal of ending electricity outages.
The development comes as a blow to Eskom’s turnaround efforts, which had shown significant improvement since March last year.
However, the company’s progress may be hindered by a recent decision by South Africa’s energy regulator to award Eskom a lower-than-expected tariff increase, effectively denying the company tens of billions of rand needed to address various financial challenges.
