JOHANNESBURG

South Africa’s state-owned electricity provider Eskom on Wednesday announced that it will introduce long hours of power cuts due to breakdowns at some of its plants, putting a huge strain on businesses.

In a brief statement, the firm said that it was escalating power outages to “Stage 6” from 12:00 p.m. local time (1000GMT) until further notice.

“This is due to a high number of breakdowns since midnight, as well as the requirement to strictly preserve the remaining emergency generation reserves,” it said.

Eskom, which generates over 90% of the country's electricity, has been struggling to meet demand and has been implementing different stages of outages for days. Stage 6 is the harshest measure.

On Tuesday, the power utility had said it would implement Stage 2 power outages from 05:00 a.m. to 04:00 p.m. local time (0300-1400GMT) daily but it has since escalated to Stage 6.

Most of the output from the utility's aging power plant array is coal-fired, with the facilities in need of maintenance.

Eskom said power cuts are implemented only as a last resort in view of the shortage of generation capacity and the need to attend to breakdowns.

According to energy experts, South Africa is currently experiencing its worst power blackouts in a decade.