South Africa’s state-owned power utility Eskom said it would shorten scheduled power cuts from Tuesday morning and that electricity constraints would ease slightly with the return of 14 generators to service this week.
In the past week Eskom has been implementing some of the deepest power cuts on record of at least six hours a day for most households and often as much as 10 hours.
President Cyril Ramaphosa cancelled plans to attend the World Economic Forum in Davos this week over the crisis, prompting the rand to fall on Monday. On Sunday his spokesman said he was due to meet leaders of political parties, an energy crisis committee and Eskom’s board of directors.
The company implemented power cuts on more than 200 days last year, the most in a calendar year. The power shortages are a source of frustration for the governing African National Congress and a brake on economic growth in Africa’s most industrialised nation.
Eskom said from Tuesday the pattern would be “Stage 4” rotational outages from 0500 local time (0300 GMT) until 1600, followed by “Stage 5” from 1600 local time until 0500 the following morning.
The utility said it had procured an additional 50 million litres of diesel, which would be used to manage pumped storage dam levels and limit power cuts.
However, Eskom added that there was a high degree of uncertainty and that these changes would only be possible if the units returned to service as planned.
In recent days Eskom has been implementing “Stage 6” outages, requiring up to 6,000 megawatts to be shed from the national grid. Under Stages 4 and 5, the amount of power required to be shed is 4,000 and 5,000 megawatts, respectively.
Almost 22,000 MW of its 46,000 MW nominal capacity is offline for planned repairs or because of breakdowns.
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