Eskom suspends second day of planned power cuts

Eskom suspended planned power outages for Sunday after the power utility announced load-shedding for the weekend on Friday night — with the “system severely constrained”.

Stage 2 load-shedding was implemented from 6am to 11pm on Saturday.

“Eskom needs to implement this load-shedding to replenish the depleted emergency reserves for the coming week,” Eskom said.

The reason for the load-shedding was due to “unforeseen breakdowns” from ageing unreliable plants, it said.

But on Sunday morning Eskom said emergency reserves recovered enough to allow it to suspend load-shedding. It did, however, still urge the public to continue to use power sparingly as the system remained constrained.

“We currently have 8 229MW on planned maintenance, while another 10 661MW of capacity is unavailable due to unplanned maintenance,” Eskom said in a statement.

Update: 13 December 2020

This story has been updated to reflect the latest developments.

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