The already depressed power situation in the country has been dealt another major blow following South African power utility company, Eskom’s announcement of a system failure at its plant.
Zimbabwe is currently relying on a lifeline from Eskom, which is supplying an additional 400 Megawatt to the national grid enough to light up just about eight hours per day.
In a Tweet this morning, Zimbabwe Electricity Transmission and Distribution Company (ZETDC) said the capacity shortage at Eskom will affect power imports, further plunging the nation into darkness.
“The Eskom alert will affect Power Imports. As such load shedding will be implemented at Stage 2 today,”ZETDC said in a statement.
Eskom has since undertaken a rotational load shedding program in South Africa starting this morning until 11pm.
“Due to a shortage of capacity stage 2 loadshedding is to be implemented from 9 am to 11 pm today. Media statement with more details to follow,”wrote Eskom in a statement.
Eskom says the failure in some of its power generation units is expected to be fully solved by end of week.
This will be the first time South Africa experiences load shedding since March this year but for Zimbabwe who owes Eskom US$ 23 million, an end to the power shortage remain much out of sight.
The country is undergoing 18 hour long load shedding and the development has already hit hard on the economy which is tinkering on the edge of collapse.
