Power utility Eskom says the recent inclement weather conditions have resulted in a number of outages in the Gauteng and Eastern Cape provinces.
Storms and heavy rains began in Gauteng on Thursday night, and widespread thundershowers are forecast to continue throughout Friday.
Eskom said this resulted in “a high volume of network faults across Gauteng”.
In the Eastern Cape, Eskom said the most affected customers resided in the Amathole, Chris Hani, Joe Gqabi and OR Tambo districts.
Partly cloudy weather conditions are expected in the Eastern Cape on Friday.
Eskom assured they were attending to the current faults, and appealed for patience while they worked on restoring supply.
Stage 2 load shedding was implemented on Thursday afternoon and is scheduled to run from 9 pm to 5 am on Friday and Saturday as well.
This was the first time since 22 July that load shedding had to be implemented.
Eskom explained in a statement this was due to emergency reserves depleting “faster than expected”, owed to breakdowns of a generating unit at Kriel and Tutuka power stations on Thursday.
There were also delays in returning units to generation at Tutuka, Grootvlei, and Kendal.
On Thursday, Eskom spokesperson Sikonathi Mantshantsha said should emergency reserves not recover sufficiently, load shedding could continue into the weekend.
Residents have been urged to use electricity as sparingly as possible.
-The Citizen
In other news – Clip of Boity and Bujy Bikwa’s fight leaked – What really happened: LISTEN
As Bujy Bikwa and Boity Thulo’s battle continues, details have emerged about what happened prior to their fight at a Midrand Hotel last week.
Several witnesses have come forward over the last few days to state that Boity seemed aggravated on the night of the fight. Bujy and Boity were among a number of people invited to what was meant to be Huawei’s official launch of the new Nova8 cellphone. Learn More