South Africa’s Eskom Escalates Power Cuts

South Africa’s Eskom said on Tuesday that it had ramped up scheduled power cuts following failures at two of its coal-fired power stations at Majuba and Tutuka.

The power cuts have been increased to “Stage 4,” which require up to 4,000 megawatts to be shed from the national grid, compared with the Stage 2 cuts implemented from Sunday.

Eskom’s electricity outages have constrained economic growth in Africa’s most industrialised nation for more than a decade.

In a best-case scenario, the state-owned power utility will be able to suspend the power cuts on Friday, Eskom executives said.

Eskom said heavy rains leading to wet coal at some of its stations were compounding its problems.

More than 15,500 megawatts of the company’s capacity is offline because of breakdowns and a further 5,000 megawatts for planned maintenance, out of its nominal capacity of roughly 46,000 megawatts.

Reuters/Christopher Ojilere