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.
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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.