Eskom has moved to stage three power cuts, the power utility’s media desk said on Thursday.

“Eskom moved from stage two to stage three load shedding at 4pm today, which is expected to continue until 11pm,” it said in a statement.

“This is due to a further shortage of generation capacity as additional units have had to be taken out of service for unplanned maintenance caused by technical faults.”

Stage one allows for up to 1GW of the national load to be cut, stage two for up to 2GW and stage three for up to 4GW.

Thursday was the first time this year that Eskom has resorted to stage three rolling blackouts.

On Wednesday, the power utility said unit 3 at its Majuba power station had an ash conveyer belt which was stuck, and at Duvha, unit 2 tripped on Tuesday night.

On Monday, Eskom said the power grid was under pressure after one of Koeberg’s 900MW units was taken out of service because of a technical fault.

“The unit is expected to be at full capacity by the end of the week. The same unit is due for planned outage on 9 February 2015 and will be returned to service again in May,” the power utility said at the time. — Sapa