Plant breakdowns have plunged South Africa back into stage-6 load shedding. The struggling state-owned utility announced it will impose the severe cuts, up from stage 5, from 4pm on Wednesday.

Blaming a shortage of generation capacity, the utility said stage 5 will be implemented from 5am to 4pm on Thursday, with a return to stage 6 thereafter. “This pattern will be repeated daily until further notice,” it said.

Breakdowns have reached 16.8GW of capacity, while plant out on planned maintenance was at 5.8GW of capacity.

Read: ‘It’s hell’: Mobile networks face load shedding nightmare

Over the past 24 hours, two Eskom generation units were returned to service at Kriel power station. However, outages elsewhere have exacerbated the situation:

A generating unit at Duvha power station was taken offline for repairs.
Delays in returning a unit each to service at Camden, Kendal, Lethabo, Medupi and Tutuka power stations have contributed to the capacity constraints.
Similarly, the increase in demand after the long weekend and the re-opening of schools has put additional strain on the power generation system.