For the first time in almost three weeks South Africans may be faced with rotational power outages on Thursday evening, as Eskom again battles a shortage of capacity. 

The power utility announced on Thursday afternoon that there is a high risk of Stage 1 load-shedding for Thursday evening between 17:00 and 22:00.

It said this was due to a shortage of capacity due to the loss of generating units at power stations.

Stage 1 load-shedding allows for 1 000 MW to be cut from the national grid to protect the country's power system from total collapse.