South Africa Power Crisis: Eskom Announces Stage 6 Load Shedding Until Further Notice

Power utility Eskom announced all-day stage 6 load shedding until further notice after it suffered multiple breakdowns at its power stations.

"Eskom will continue to manage the limited emergency generation reserves to supplement generation capacity. Eskom will publish a further update as soon as there are any significant changes," the company said Wednesday.

11 generators totaling 5084 MW experienced failures starting Tuesday morning, substantially lowering the amount of power available. It further resulted in the expansion of load-shedding phases, Reuters reported.

The affected power plants include one unit each in Camden, Duvha, Grootvlei, Hendrina, and Kendal, as well as two units at Kriel, Majuba, and Malta.

In this regard, Eskom urged the public to reduce electricity usage and maintain patience.

"Eskom requests the public to reduce the usage of electricity and to exercise patience and tolerance during this difficult period. Load shedding is implemented only as a last resort given the shortage of generation capacity and the need to attend to breakdowns," the utility added.

Taking to Twitter, Eskom said 2,540MW consisting of one unit each at the Camden, Duvha, Hendrina, Kriel, Matimba, and Malta power plants were restored.

As of now, 18,041MW of capacity is lost due to failures compared to 5,739MW of planned maintenance. With load shedding in South Africa reaching stage 6, the cities of Cape Town and Johannesburg each issued a separate advisory regarding infrastructure problems, News 24 Reported.

The City of Johannesburg urged citizens to remain vigilant and report any theft or damage to infrastructure, especially cable theft.

Cape Town announced the activation of its Disaster Operations Center to help citizens deal with any potential effects of the ongoing load shedding. Similar to Johannesburg, the city's infrastructure suffers greatly during protracted outages. However, the ripple impact on Cape Town's beaches, some of which have been forced to close owing to raw sewage in the water, only makes it worse.

Meanwhile, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced that Eskom will be managed by the Department of Energy, according to Financial Times. During a press conference, Ramaphosa said this was one of the resolutions adopted at the ANC's national conference. The President added that the government will decide how and when the resolution will be implemented.