Eskom continues to struggle to supply enough electricity to South Africans to meet demand, despite the holiday lull.

The failing state-owned utility on Wednesday made the inconvenience of load shedding just that little bit greater by announcing it plans to hike the rolling power interruptions to stage 3.

The reason? “The breakdown of two generating units and the delay in returning to service three generating units from planned maintenance,” Eskom said.

In other words, the same old story. But one that is likely to repeat itself for at least the next 18-24 months until new capacity is (hopefully) built to meet demand — and make up for the continued decline in the “energy availability factor” (EAF) of Eskom’s generating fleet.

Read: Eskom needs a new management team – but so does the country

Eskom’s EAF, which excludes renewables and energy supplied from abroad and by independent power producers, has been slipping for years, reflecting the poor and declining state of ageing coal-fired power stations and contributing to higher stages of load shedding.

Eskom said the stage-3 load shedding will be implemented from 4pm on Wednesday “until further notice”.