Blackout Friday

On Black Friday – arguably the biggest retail sales day of the year – Eskom escalated load shedding to stage 6 from midday.

The embattled state power utility had to increase the level of its rolling blackouts to make up for generation capacity shortages and dwindling reserves.

“It is with great regret that due to the shortage of generating capacity and emergency reserves, stage 6 load shedding will be implemented from 12:00 today until 05:00 on Monday,” said Eskom.

The last time Eskom implemented stage 6 power cuts was in September. Stage 6 load shedding means that up to 6 000MW of capacity needs to be shed and therefore consumers can expect to be shed up to 12 times over a four-day period.

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The utility has been steadily ramping up power cuts in recent weeks. On Wednesday, Eskom was forced to implemented stage 4 power cuts after several of its generating units failed to return to service.

Eskom’s latest update comes as several parts of the country is battling summer heatwaves. The utility said it will issue further updates on the state of its systems later in the day.