Eskom has announced that load-shedding will briefly shift to Stage 1 on Sunday evening before returning to Stage 2 on Monday.
The power utility, which implemented the outages earlier in the week, confirmed in a statement that continued cuts were unavoidable:
"Load-shedding will be reduced to Stage 1 from 23:00 tonight until 05:00. Regrettably, as the return to service of some generation units has been delayed, as well as the need to manage the emergency generation reserves and identified risks to the power system."
Stage 2 outages will be enforced early on Monday morning as a result of the continued struggles facing the utility:
"Stage 2 load-shedding will be implemented from 05:00 tomorrow morning. The system remains constrained and vulnerable, and Eskom will give a further update on the power situation tomorrow afternoon."
The utility explained that two generation units at Kusile power station, which had been unavailable last week had experienced difficulties in restarting. In addition to this battle, Eskom noted that teams had managed to successfully repair a generation unit at the Kriel, Grootvlei and Duvha power stations.
The current Covid-19 crisis has also weighed heavily on the efforts to regain control over the system, explained the utility:
"Despite Eskom's stringent measures to manage the impact of the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic on the operations, we are experiencing some impact on operations, including our suppliers. For example, at the Medupi power station, we have had 48 positive cases out of a pool of 75 contractors which has negatively affected our ability to execute work as planned."
With a staggering 13 181MW of generation capacity offline due to unplanned maintenance, breakdowns and outage delays, Eskom called on South Africans to reduce consumption:
"Eskom would like to urge the public to reduce electricity consumption in order to help us minimize load-shedding."
