De Ruyter briefed the media on Wednesday morning on the power utility's challenges.

"Due to the loss of Madupi, Kendal and Duvha units we now have insufficient generation capacity at our disposal and as such we have no alternative but to implement Stage 2 load shedding. 

"We have a challenge with our remaining emergency reserves forecasting our projected diesel consumption has put us in a position where we are likely to deplete our diesel reserves too quickly and that will create an undue amount of risk in the system and consequently we have to preserve our emergency reserves.”

He says on Tuesday, there were two boiler tube leaks and Kusile and Majuba that forced a unit each down and further trips of units at three other stations.

Last night an alert was issued on the risks of load shedding.

"The demand for evening peak at 7 o'clock tonight is forecast to be 27 781, so that is reasonably low, but given the amount of unplanned outages, this creates a significant risk."

Eskom warned on Tuesday that there is a high possibility after five of its generation units failed, losing over 16 000MW of power.

Spokesperson Sikonathi Mantshantsha said the five units at various stations failed throughout the day.

The power utility has urged residents to reduce electricity consumption to help the power system recover.

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