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South Africa’s Eskom Cuts Power Supplies Due to Breakdowns

South Africa’s Eskom Cuts Power Supplies Due to Plant Breakdowns

South Africa’s Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd. resumed cutting power to customers due to breakdowns at some of its electricity-generating plans.

The state-owned company, which is struggling to reduce its debt burden, has been cutting 2,000 megawatts from the grid since Saturday evening after breakdowns and malfunctions at six of its plants. The rolling power cuts, known locally as load-shedding, will be suspended on Monday morning and re-introduced during evenings until Tuesday night after a unit at its Koeberg plant tripped on Sunday, Eskom said in a statement.

South Africa, the continent’s most industrialized economy, has struggled with intermittent outages since 2005 as the utility’s ageing and poorly maintained plants fail to meet demand. The nation is heading for a record year of blackouts this year, with data from the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research showing that outages in the first half were equivalent to about 70% of those experienced throughout 2020.

©2021 Bloomberg L.P.