Eskom has begun implementing stage one load shedding, it announced on Twitter on Friday.

A tweet sent from the power utilities media account read “Eskom has started load shedding in stage 1 as of 11:05.”

Eskom spokesperson Khulu Phasiwe said the energy grid was severely constrained because Eskom did not have new generating capacity Fin24 reported.

Because maintenance was deferred, current generators were breaking down and there were unplanned power outages.

“The power grid is constrained, but Eskom is doing everything to ensure we avoid load-shedding.”

On Wednesday, the risk of power cuts was high after, among other things, two generators failed, Fin24 reported.

At the time, Eskom warned that power cuts would be a last resort to prevent a “total collapse” of the system.

One of the generators had been repaired by Wednesday afternoon.

On Friday, Phasiwe said the other was still offline and engineers were working on repairing it.

“To compensate we have brought back to service some of the generating units which were taken off for regular maintenance.”

The first unit of the Medupi power station was expected to be synchronised in the first quarter of 2015, but was expected to start producing electricity only in June, he said.

Eskom would need to do further tests to ensure Medupi’s electricity output was ramped up, he added.

On December 5, Eskom implemented stage three blackouts, but on December 8 Eskom CEO Tshediso Matona denied that Eskom was in crisis.

Stage one allows for up to 1000MW of the national load to be shed, stage two for up to 2000MW and stage three for up to 4000MW.

–Fin24