South African electricity public utility, Eskom, has stated that due to delays in getting several producing units back into service, it started stage 2 load-shedding at 7:00 local time on Wednesday morning.
Stage 2 power cuts will last until 16:00, at which point stage 3 power cuts will go into effect and last until midnight.
The state-owned electric company announced that a comprehensive update would be released in the afternoon.
Up until this morning, Eskom suspended rotational power cuts during the day and ran stage 3 load-shedding between 6:00 and 12:00.
According to Eskom’s evening peak data for last night, there was a total demand of 31,407 MW and 28,779 MW of available capacity.
It utilized 1,014 MW of dispatchable capacity from independent power producers and 1,736 MW of wind power while operating 18 of its open-cycle gas turbines, which is almost all of them.
The electricity company added that it load-shed 3,218 MW at its peak, which is stage 4 load-shedding in technical terms.
The higher-than-announced level of load-shedding was not explained by load curtailment.
Eskom said that there was no load curtailment on Tuesday night when asked about it. When there is no load-shedding throughout the day, it also halts load curtailment. Eskom announced that load shedding would take place on Wednesday.
