Cape Town - Eskom said on Monday afternoon it would interrupt loadshedding between 4pm and 6pm to ease rush hour traffic.
The national power utility is implementing Stage 2 scheduled blackouts - which sees up to 2 000 megawatt taken off the national grid - on Monday and said it would continue from 6pm to 6am on Tuesday.
"Stage 2 loadshedding will be suspended for two hours from 4pm today, in an endeavor to ease traffic congestion. Loadshedding will then resume at 6pm until 6am tomorrow."
It added that the rush hour respite was a "pilot" initiative which forms part of efforts to determine an appropriate approach to loadshedding.
Eskom CEO Andre de Ruyter announced last Friday that loadshedding would be a fact of life for South Africans for the foreseeable future as the power grid was strained, unreliable and unpredictable.