S. Africa's power crisis worsens

South Africa's power crisis worsened on Tuesday as electricity utility Eskom moved to stage- two load shedding.

Eskom has moved from stage-one to stage-two load shedding as of 11:30 a.m. and this would last until 22:00 p.m. local time, the utility announced.

This was due to a shortage of generation capacity, Eskom said.

"We moved to stage 2 in order to manage our reserves at our pumped storage schemes and gas turbines so that we can better manage the rest of the week," Acting Chief Executive Dan Marokane said.

On Monday Eskom implemented stage-one load shedding across the country as a result of unforeseen technical problems at power stations.

Eskom has three stages for load shedding. Stage one allows for up to 1000MW of the national load to be shed once a day. If the pressure grows, stage two for up to 2000MW or stage three for up to 4000MW would be shed. At stage two, power goes off twice a day, while at stage three, electricity could be cut two or three times a day.

"At our pumped storage schemes (which use water to generate electricity), the dam levels are low because we were not able to pump the water back to full capacity over the weekend," Marokane said.

This is a result of Eskom having to use pumped storage schemes over the weekend to meet demand. Ordinarily, the weekends are used to pump dam levels to maximum capacity in preparation for the forecasted increased demand in electricity during the week.

"The power grid is extremely constrained and will remain so for the rest of the summer. Eskom calls on consumers to switch off geysers, air conditioners, pool pumps and all nonessential appliances throughout the day to reduce electricity demand," Marokane said.

He also requested workers to switch off the lights, with the exception of security lighting when they leave office buildings in the evening and to ensure that air-conditioners are switched off over night.

Eskom, the country's major electricity supplier, implements load shedding as a last resort to protect the national system from a total blackout which would have significant impact on the economic development of South Africa.

South Africa has suffered from power insufficiency since 2008. Power cuts, which have cost the economy an estimated 300 billion rand (about 26 billion U.S. dollars) since 2008, have again become commonplace since November last year when two coal-burning major power stations broke down.

Eskom is now burning diesel to the value of 1 billion rand (about 90 million U.S. dollars) a month to keep the lights on.

The utility reportedly would be broke in mid February after forking out billions of rand to buy diesel to boost the grid, if not bailed out by the government. Endi