(Bloomberg) -- South Africa is facing the most severe nationwide power cuts in months after state-owned power utility Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd. announced that it would implement so-called Stage 6 outages — taking 6,000 megawatts of demand off the grid — from midnight Saturday until further notice. 

The increased power outages come even after Eskom returned two generating units to service, with the utility taking another two units offline, Eskom said in a statement on X.

“This combined with the need to replenish the pumped storage dams in preparation for the week ahead, necessitated the implementation of Stage 6 loadshedding from midnight until further notice,” according to the statement.

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