Eskom pleads with South Africans to save electricity as load-shedding resumes on Thursday

Enforced electricity cuts have been imposed, effective from 8am on Thursday to 6am on Friday.

This follows two nights of stage two load-shedding. Thursday's outage is also at stage two.

The system is “severely constrained and unpredictable.”

Eskom is appealing to South Africans to practise a no-waste approach to electricity by, among other power-saving measures, switching off appliances at the wall plug when not in use, as well as geysers, pool pumps and air conditioning units.

“We ask customers to reduce demand by using electricity sparingly as a concerted collective effort can help to avoid or reduce the level of load-shedding,” the utility said.

Eskom said it has lost additional capacity overnight with breakdowns of more than 14,000MW.

“Our emergency reserves are also insufficient to meet the demands during the day. As a result, we have to load-shed throughout the day, until tomorrow.

“Our teams continue to work tirelessly to return units from planned and unplanned outages.  

“We will give South Africans regular updates about our prognosis for tomorrow and our recovery efforts for the rest of the week leading into the weekend.”

Load-shedding is an essential and controlled measure to ensure that the integrity of the grid is not compromised, added Eskom.