Power outage
UNSPLASH

South African state power utility Eskom on Wednesday increased scheduled power cuts to "Stage 6" as the utility suffered one of the worst outage levels on record.

Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd. said on Wednesday that it has imposed power cuts of 6,000 megawatts due to breakdowns at a number of its 14 coal-fired power plants. This takes 19,052 megawatts of generation capacity out of action, which is a bad time considering that an additional 4,984 megawatts are already out due to maintenance.

Eskom spokesperson Sikonathi Mantshantsha said that the current load shedding is unlikely to improve in the next six to 12 months. This means that all South Africans will have to go without electricity for six to eight hours every day during this period.

The main reason for the current power situation is that in October, three units at the Kusile power station were taken offline, totaling 2 100MW. One unit had a chimney failure, and the other two were placed offline for maintenance, according to the statement.

Eskom's generation capacity will be further impacted by the six-month outage of unit 1 at the Koeberg Nuclear power station, which is currently undergoing normal maintenance and refueling. In addition, today three steam generators are being replaced at Koeberg, as part of the long-term operation to extend its life for another 20 years.

These power cuts are hindering economic growth and exacerbating existing outages. This is the highest number of power plant breakdowns that Eskom has had to deal with in at least a year.

Eskom has caused South Africa to experience its worst power cuts this year, with intermittent outages beginning in 2008. Currently, residential areas can expect at least six hours of outages a day. However, the level of outages will be reduced to 5,000 megawatts at 5 a.m. local time on Friday.

Last month, Eskom warned that the loss of capacity would make for a very challenging summer season. This is because several units at various power stations have to be shut down for maintenance.

The high levels of unplanned outages have contributed to more than 170 days of load shedding since January and have hurt businesses and households across the country.