Eskom quietly reaches unprecedented level of power cuts

South Africa’s struggling state-owned utility Eskom appears to have reached an unprecedented level of power cuts, indicated late Tuesday by the company spokesman.

The company cut 7,045 megawatts from the grid, a practice locally referred to as load shedding, in order to keep the grid from a total collapse, Sikonathi Mantshantsha said in a post on Twitter.

While that would be the deepest level of outage on record, so-called Stage 7 power cuts were not formally announced on Eskom’s schedule. The most recent announcement said the utility is implementing Stage 6, where it removes 6,000 megawatts.

Eskom’s media desk didn’t immediately respond to an email seeking comment and Mantshantsha didn’t immediately respond to a phone call and a text message.

South Africa has declared a state of disaster due to its energy crisis. Eskom has been forced to implement power cuts every day this year as its fleet of old and defective coal-powered stations frequently breaks down.