South Africa's state power utility has increased scheduled outages due to delays in returning generating units to service and breakdowns at other plants. The utility, Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd., announced that loadshedding will be increased to stage 5, removing 5,000 megawatts from the grid, until 5 a.m. on Tuesday. After that, stage 4 loadshedding will be implemented until further notice.

South African Electricity Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa expressed concern about the delay in returning a unit of the Koeberg nuclear power plant to service. Unit 1 at Koeberg, generating 920 megawatts, has been offline since December for maintenance and life-extension works and was supposed to return 10 weeks ago. The delay raises the risk of overlap with the scheduled outage of Unit 2, which also generates 920 megawatts and is set for refurbishment in September.

Meanwhile, G7 Renewable Energies, a South African power-project developer, is seeking to block new rules governing the connection of plants to the national electricity grid, arguing that they are flawed and will hinder adding more generation capacity. Eskom introduced the Interim Grid Capacity Allocation Rules in June to prevent grid capacity hoarding and prioritize shovel-ready projects, but private generation projects were sidelined due to grid connection issues.

Additionally, Eskom has canceled coal-supply agreements and construction contracts worth 11 billion rand ($613 million) as part of the crackdown on crime at the state-owned utility. Litigation by Eskom has rendered coal-supply agreements worth 3.7 billion rand invalid, while other coal and construction deals worth 10 billion rand have been set aside, according to President Cyril Ramaphosa's response to an opposition lawmaker's question. Eskom did not immediately provide a comment.