State-owned power utility Eskom on Monday urged consumers to save electricity as it implemented load shedding, owing to unforeseen technical problems at some of its power stations.

The utility on Monday morning announced that it would start stage one load shedding, which allows for 1 000 MW of the national load to be shed, but by the afternoon Eskom moved to implement stage two load shedding, with 2 000 MW of the national load to be shed.

Load shedding would continue until 22:00 and Eskom appealed to residential and commercial customers to switch off nonessential appliances and lights.

An Eskom spokesperson told Engineering News Online, last week, that the risk of load shedding would be heightened next month as the power utility takes half of the Koeberg power station’s capacity off line for general maintenance.

“While the grid was continually constrained, next month’s scheduled maintenance on one of the two 900 MW units at the Cape Town nuclear power station raised concerns over the utility’s ability to keep the lights on during the period,” said the spokesperson.

However, the utility said it was in the process of bringing a number of generators back on line following maintenance and repair work, noting that this could alleviate the increased pressure on the national grid.

Eskom last week revealed in a system update that demand for electricity would increase to 30 388 MW, 30 577 MW and 30 555 MW respectively for Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday this week, while available capacity would only be 29 291 MW, 29 827 MW and 29 860 MW respectively on these days.