Stage two loadshedding throughout Thursday and into Friday
South Africans will suffer stage two loadshedding starting from 08:00 on Thursday morning, right through to Friday morning at 06:00.
The system remains severely constrained and unpredictable, the utility said in a statement.
Guide: Find your load shedding schedule
Eskom lost additional generation capacity overnight with breakdowns of over 14,000MW. Emergency reserves are also insufficient to meet the demand for electricity during the day.
Anything above 9 500MW means that Eskom has to resort to emergency power generation: open cycle gas turbines and pumped storage hydro electrical plants. These are very expensive ways of generating power, particularly gas turbines as they require large quantities of diesel. They can only be used for short periods before diesel and water reserves run out.