Photo by: Creamer Media
Eskom said on Wednesday it would press on with rotating blackouts, suppressing 2 000 MW of demand at a given time until 9 am, before doubling that to 4 000 MW till 11 pm to avoid tripping the entire national grid.
"This is due to a shortage of capacity. Eskom’s maintenance teams are working round the clock to return generation units to the electricity system," it said.
Public enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan said on Wednesday it was going to be a huge struggle to overcome the crisis, which he and senior Eskom officials partly blamed on a failure to maintain plants over the last five years, leaving the state utility with only 28 000 MW of electricity available against 48 000 MW of installed capacity.