Eskom reduces power cuts

South Africa’s state-owned power utility Eskom reduced power cuts on Sunday as severe outages earlier in the weekend allowed the “replenishment” of emergency reserves.

Power cuts were reduced to stage 4 load shedding from 12 midday SA time on Sunday to 5 am on Monday, Eskom said in a statement on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Read: Load shedding: Who to believe?

Stage 3 load shedding will then start and will run until 4 pm Monday before stage 4 resumes again. This pattern will continue until Thursday, Eskom said.

The country over the weekend has been subjected to the deepest level of nationwide power cuts in months after implementation of stage 6 load shedding, where 6 000 megawatts was cut from the grid.

Read: Blackout Friday

About 2 500 megawatts of generating capacity is expected to return to service by Tuesday evening, Eskom said.