Power outages in South Africa are at their worst due to malfunctioning generating units

Following many failures at the Majuba and Camden power facilities over the weekend, South Africa’s Eskom claimed it had successfully restored eight units at power plants after applying its highest degree of controlled power cuts early on Sunday.

Stage 3 power cuts, sometimes referred to as loadshedding locally, were implemented by Eskom on Saturday, thereby reducing the national grid’s power supply by 3,000 megawatts.

Dan Marokane, the CEO of the Eskom group, told reporters on Sunday that “we have essentially returned six units out of the 10 that we lost overnight.”

In addition to the 3,200 MW of capacity that was regained overnight, he indicated that five to six units were anticipated to come online throughout the day.

In light of the rate of recovery, he stated, “We anticipate getting out of this stage by the end of the week,” and Eskom would think about reducing its power outages by Monday.

On Monday morning, Eskom said that the power outages will be lowered to Stage 4 for the time being.

In Africa’s most industrialized economy, loadshedding—an incremental method in which 1,000 MW are withdrawn from the system in Stage 1 and the highest applied to date in Stage 6—is frequently caused by regular problems at Eskom’s fleet of aging coal-fired facilities, which provide the majority of the energy.