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, Feb 2 (Reuters) – South African utility Eskom will make scheduled power cuts from Wednesday until Monday after generating units failed at some coal plants and a return to service was delayed for other units.

The outages by the cash-strapped utility are the latest in a series that have constrained economic growth in Africa’s most industrialised nation.

Out of Eskom’s roughly 46,000 megawatt (MW) nominal capacity, it said nearly 15,000 MW was offline because of breakdowns and 4,435 MW was offline because of a backlog planned repairs.

“Over the past four days we have significantly depleted our reserves of both diesel and water in our pumped storage facilities. These two act as the battery or buffer that protect us against a total system blackout,” Chief Executive Andre de Ruyter told a media briefing.

Read more: South African power utility Eskom splits off transmission division

The controlled power cuts are necessary to prevent a “catastrophic” collapse of the power grid which would take between two to three weeks to reboot, De Ruyter added.

The firm’s stage-2 power cut, as it is called, requires shedding of up to 2,000 MW from the grid, and was due to start at 11 a.m. (0900 GMT), running until 5 a.m. on Monday.

It would use the time to replenish emergency generation reserves that have been depleted, it added.

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“Three generating units are expected to return to service by this afternoon,” Eskom said, adding that mega-coal plant Kusile was among those that have already started feeding into the national electricity grid.

De Ruyter said repairs at Medupi’s coal-fired plant, where an explosion last year caused extensive damage at one generating unit, was expected to be fully repaired towards the end of 2023 at a cost of some 2.5 billion rand ($163 million).

($1 = 15.2679 rand)

(Reporting by Olivia Kumwenda-Mtambo and Wendell Roelf; Editing by Clarence Fernandez and Edmund Blair)