No load shedding planned for Friday; no news yet for the weekend

Eskom says it is not planning to institute rotational power cuts on Friday as it has seen a "number of improvements in the power system".

However, in a statement issued on Thursday afternoon, it did not yet indicate what the outlook might be for the weekend. 

Unplanned outages were slightly higher at 10 494 MW at 16:55 on Thursday due to the fact that the power utility had lost some generating units - however, there had been no load shedding scheduled on Thursday, the day of the crucial State of the Nation address, and no further cuts were expected the next day. 

"Eskom has not load shed over the past two days owing to a number of improvements on the power system," the utility said. Earlier, it said its emergency reserves of diesel and water were at adequate levels. 

However, it did ask customers to keep using electricity sparingly. 

• READ: Find your load shedding schedule

Eskom has previously said there will be an increased likelihood of load shedding over the next 18 months as it conducts critical maintenance on its ageing fleet of power stations