S. African power utility denies "Day-Zero" in electricity supply

CAPE TOWN, March 20 (Xinhua) -- South Africa's power utility Eskom on Wednesday rejected reports about an upcoming Day-Zero when there will be no electricity in the country.

"Messages being circulated via social and digital media indicating that there will not be electricity in South Africa are false and misleading," the utility said.

Eskom is aware of its parody accounts being used to spread fake news, it said.

Over the past week, South Africa has been hard hit by a worsening power crisis.

Amid more frequent power blackouts, President Cyril Ramaphosa has urged South Africans to prepare for tougher times to come.

Load-shedding has has worsened since Saturday following the onslaught of tropical cyclone Idai in Mozambique.

A loss of 1,100 megawatts from Mozambique forced Eskom to implement stage 4 load-shedding, which allows for up to 4000 MW of the national load to be shed.

Stage 4 is the most severe load-shedding that was first implemented in February and now has been in effect for the past five consecutive days.

There have been reports that Eskom is preparing stage 5 and 6 load-shedding, meaning that the utility will shed 5,000 MW and 6,000 MW respectively, seen as an indication that the national grid is on the brink of collapse.

South Africa has never experienced higher than stage 4 load-shedding.

Eskom has denied that it would implement stage 5 and 6 load-shedding but acknowledged that there is a race against time to ensure that a national blackout and grid collapse does not happen.

"Load-shedding is controlled and managed on a rotational basis for a period of between two or four hours at a time, depending on the schedule that the customer is on, on a particular day," the utility said.

Load-shedding is implemented as a measure of last resort to protect the national electricity system, Eskom said.

"We will continue to provide regular updates about the state of the power system through various media and through the official Eskom social media platforms," it said.