South Africa’s state-owned electricity utility Eskom has restored six generating units after implementing the highest level of controlled power outages early Sunday morning. The power outages follow a spate of failures at its Majuba and Camden power stations over the weekend.
On Saturday, Eskom implemented Stage 3 load shedding, removing 3,000 megawatts from the national grid. On Sunday, Eskom CEO Dan Marokane confirmed that six of the ten lost units had been brought back online, with another five to six expected to return later in the day, with 3,200 MW of capacity to be restored overnight.
Frequent failures at Eskom’s old coal-fired power plants, which provide most of South Africa’s electricity, continue to trigger load shedding. The company hopes to reduce power outages by Monday and exit the current phase by the end of the week. Phase 6 continues to be the highest level of load shedding implemented to date.