Eskom has plunged South Africa back into stage-2 load shedding, with the rolling national blackouts set to continue until Sunday night.

The debt-laded state-owned utility, which has been struggling to keep the lights on thanks to chronic underinvestment in infrastructure, said it is facing “continued delays in returning generation units to service at the Kusile, Duvha, Kendal and Koeberg power stations”.

“These constraints have been exacerbated by the high winter demand throughout the day over the past few days, brought about by the colder temperatures,” it said.

Eskom has used its emergency generation reserves “extensively” in recent days to avoid load shedding during the daytime. As a result, these resources are now depleted, reducing available capacity.

The utility reiterated that load shedding is likely to continue periodically throughout winter.