Eskom to extend power cuts to Tuesday

South African power utility Eskom, which resumed nationwide power cuts on Monday, said it will extend outages to Tuesday after delays in returning to service some of the generation units that had broken down.

South Africa’s economy slipped into recession last year, highlighting the impact of power cuts on the economy.

On Monday Eskom cut up to 1 000 megawatts (MW) from the grid because of breakdowns of generation units.

It had planned to end the power cuts at 2300 local time (2100 GMT) but later said the outages would continue until Tuesday, when up to 2 000 MW would be cut from the grid.

“Load-shedding is likely to continue for the rest of the week,” Eskom said in a statement, referring to rotational power cuts. “There has been further delay on some generation units that were expected to return to service today.”

Eskom said there were breakdowns of generating units with 12 371 MW capacity as of 1410 GMT and planned maintenance outages accounting for 4 728 MW. The utility has a total of about 45 000 MW of generating capacity.

The utility, which has not implemented any power cuts since February 22, produces more than 90% of South Africa’s electricity, but its ailing fleet of coal-fired plants have struggled to keep up with demand, leading to periodic power shortages.