"While our teams doubled their efforts to return units from planned and unplanned outages, we also lost several units during the course of yesterday [Saturday], the state-owned power utility said in a statement.

As a result, Eskom had to run its open-cycle gas turbines as well as pumped storage schemes to meet the demand for electricity. Despite using the emergency resources on Saturday, Eskom's emergency generators remained at good levels to supplement capacity on Sunday, should the need arise.

Unplanned outages or breakdowns, which were at 12,104MW as at 7 am on Sunday morning, continued to receive special attention this weekend.

Critical maintenance was being done to units on planned outages as well as some of those on unplanned outages to ensure their timeous return to service in order to meet the coming week’s increased demand.

"Our focus today [Sunday] is also to replenish water levels at the pumped storage schemes to full capacity in preparation for the week ahead.

"We are monitoring the system closely and we will continue to give periodic updates on the status of the power system, as things may change at short notice. We ask customers to continue to use electricity wisely to assist us to avoid or limit the level of load shedding. We will give South Africans an update about our prognosis for the coming working week later today," Eskom said.

African News Agency (ANA)