A number of South African businesses and households’ s were for a second day running left without power as the country’s electricity distributor rationed power.
State run power company Eskom said it would be shedding off 2,000 megawatts between 9am and 10pm local time.
Eskom supplies more than 95 percent of the electricity consumed in the country.
This was the most serious load shedding this year.
Previously, Stage 1 load shedding, which allows for up to 1,000 MW of the national load to be shed once a day had been implemented several times.
Eskom said load shedding was implemented rotationaly as a last resort to protect the power system from a total collapse.
“We continue to appeal to residents and businesses to use electricity sparingly during this period. Please switch off geysers as well as all non-essential lighting and electricity appliances to assist in reducing demand,” the firm said.
Eskom has been battling to recover from a severe financial crisis, compounded by coal shortages and poor power station performance.
The generation and distribution of electricity in the country has been constrained because the utility firm has been running short of coal, which it relies on to generate power.
This has raised concern that that similar load shedding is on the way as in 2014 and 2015 when frequent load shedding gripped the country
Since 2008, South Africa has suffered from power insufficiency which has led to economic losses of an estimated 300 billion rand (about 23 billion U.S. dollars).
