Vehicles negotiates a crossing where the traffic lights are off due to a scheduled power outage known as load shedding in Cape Town, South Africa, 11 December 2019.
Load shedding is the deliberate shut down of parts of the electrical grid. Power cuts over the past week in South Africa were raised to a record Stage 6 at times removing 6,000 megawatts from the national grid according to South Africa’s state run power utility Eskom.
The rolling blackouts have been having a detrimental effect on the economy with broad disturbances on cellular telephone networks and internet connections.
The ailing power utility Eskom said the move to stage 6 which has never been implemented before was due to a shortage of capacity following a technical problem at Medupi power station.
