South African electricity utility Eskom announced on Monday that rolling power blackouts will be raised to stage six as a result of a shortage of capacity.
"We regret and sincerely apologize that stage 4 load shedding will move to stage 6 load shedding as from 18:00 today, as a result of a shortage of capacity," the utility said.
This followed a technical problem at Medupi Power Station in Limpopo Province impacting additional generation supply, said Eskom, which provides more than 95 percent of electricity consumed in the country.
To date, load shedding has been implemented up to stage four. Stage six means that the national grid moves a step closer to a total collapse.
State-owned Eskom implements load shedding as a last resort to prevent a total collapse of the national grid.
South Africa has been hard hit by a new round of load shedding since December 5.
This fresh round of rolling blackouts comes on the back of an already shrinking economy, and will further impact economic growth as South Africa heads into the festive season and the height of the country's tourism influx.
Experts estimate that load shedding has cost the country five billion rand (about 340 million U.S. dollars) in economic losses for the past five days.
Debt-ridden Eskom has been gripped by poor management and alleged corruption, two major factors that are blamed for the worsening power crisis.
Editor:Cherie
