JOHANNESBURG, March 12 (Reuters) – South Africa’s state utility Eskom said on Friday it would extend scheduled power cuts by two more days, until 2300 local time (2100 GMT) on Sunday, as breakdowns at its Kriel, Medupi and Kendal power stations knocked more generation units offline.

Eskom will cut up to 2,000 megawatts (MW) from the national grid, called locally “stage 2 load-shedding”.

“We currently have 7,071 megawatts on planned maintenance, while another 11,780 MW of capacity is unavailable due to breakdowns and delays. This has led to our inability to supply the increasing demand,” the firm said in a statement. (Reporting by Mfuneko Toyana; Editing by Jon Boyle)

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