A general view of the headquarter of the embattled South African main electricity provider ESKOM is pictured on February 4, 2015 in Johannesburg. South Africa power supply was under “extreme” pressure on February 2, 2015 and likely to remain so until end of the week after a technical fault at the country’s sole nuclear plant, electricity utility Eskom said. AFP PHOTO/GIANLUIGI GUERCIA (Photo by Gianluigi GUERCIA / AFP) (Photo by GIANLUIGI GUERCIA/AFP via Getty Images)

JOHANNESBURG, March 9 (Reuters) – South Africa’s Eskom aims to make cuts of 4,000 MegaWatts (MW) from the national grid, up from an earlier figure of up to 2,000 MW of rotational power cuts, after suffering more breakdowns at generation units, the utility said on Wednesday.

The deeper cuts will start from 9 a.m. (0700 GMT) on Wednesday until 5 a.m. on Friday, Eskom said in a statement, after which it return to cuts of 2,000 MW until 5 a.m. on Monday.

The utility’s power outages have constrained economic growth in Africa’s most industrialised nation in recent years. The latest cuts started on Monday.

Eskom has previously said the controlled cuts are necessary to prevent a “catastrophic” collapse of the power grid.

More than 15,000 MW of its nominal capacity of roughly 46,000 MW was offline because of breakdowns and a further 5,505 MW for planned maintenance, the utility said.

This is a developing story…

(Reporting by Olivia Kumwenda-Mtambo; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)

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