Johannesburg - Eskom announced it has implemented stage two rolling blackouts on Wednesday evening.
“The system will not be able to meet 2 000 MW [megawatts] of demand, meaning that although certain areas will be without electricity for a certain period, about 93 percent of South Africans will still continue to receive power supply at the same time,” the struggling power utility said in a statement.
“The electricity supply system is very vulnerable due to a shortage of generation capacity as several units are currently out of service due to maintenance.”
Earlier, Eskom had implemented stage one rolling blackouts at around 5pm, citing a constrained power system.
Stage two blackouts were likely to continue until 10pm on Wednesday, it said.
Stage 1 allows for up to 1000MW of the national load to be saved, stage 2 for up to 2000MW, and stage 3 for up to 4000MW.
ANA