Eskom has announced that load shedding will be dropping to Stage 3 from 21:00 on Thursday night, and will continue until 05:00 on Friday morning.
"Thereafter Stage 2 load shedding will be implemented as previously communicated, until 05:00 on Saturday morning," the power utility announced.
A unit each at Medupi, Koeberg, Kriel, Kusile and Tutuka power stations were returned to service.
However, at the same time, a unit at Majuba and Arnot stations tripped, and a unit at Matla was forced to shut down.
This followed Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan saying in his briefing on Wednesday night it was likely that South Africa would drop to Stage 3 load shedding overnight. This, however, did not happened until the Thursday night announcement by Eskom.
Gordhan said on Wednesday night that "as a result of extensive discussions, is that the following is likely to happen over the next few days".
"The first is that overnight, some 2 000 MW of power will be returned to operations, and as a result it is expected that the system will be downgraded from a Level 4 load shedding, to Level 3 load shedding."
Eskom had to resort to Stage 4 due to the breakdown in several units at the generation plants, but also because of delays in the return of units that were out for maintenance and have not come back successfully.
