Eskom will reduce planned power cuts this week after sufficient progress was made in replenishing emergency generation reserves, the utility said on Sunday.

Eskom’s ageing power stations run mostly on coal and are highly prone to faults resulting in frequent outages. Government has tried to reform Eskom to make it more efficient, but progress has been slow.

Having implemented cuts of up to 4GW from Saturday morning until 5am on Monday, Eskom said it will reduce these to stage-3 cuts of up to 3GW until 5am on Tuesday. Thereafter, stage-2 will be implemented until Friday night.

Stage-2 cuts mean that homes and businesses without their own generators will not have power for two to four hours a day.

Read: Eskom names contractors for mega battery storage projects

“Sufficient progress has been made in recovering the emergency generation reserves, and it is anticipated that the dam levels at the pumped storage schemes will be fully replenished by tomorrow morning,” the utility said in a statement.

Eskom added that two generation units returned to service overnight, with 11 units anticipated to return to service over the next 24 hours, helping to ease the capacity constraints. — (c) 2022 Reuters