South Africa’s Eskom Announces First Power Cuts In Three Weeks

South Africa’s state-owned power utility will start its first rotational electricity cuts in three weeks on Monday.

Gatekeepers News reports that Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd. will cut 2,000 megawatts from the national grid from 5 p.m. until 10 p.m. through Thursday, according to a statement on Twitter.

While this would be the first planned outages since May 30, Eskom has issued several warnings this month that the power system is constrained and it may have to start blackouts at short notice.

The utility’s inability to generate enough electricity to meet demand, with aging infrastructure that regularly breaks down, is a strain on economic growth and makes it difficult to convince businesses to expand in the country. South Africa has had more than 50 days of so-called loadshedding, the local term for planned outages, this year.