South Africans will face 13 hours of stage 1 rotational load shedding on Saturday between 09:00 and 22:00, according to Eskom. 

Stage 1 load shedding allows for 1 000 megawatts to be shed from the national grid. 

Load shedding over weekends is rarer than during the week due to a routine decrease in electricity use on Saturdays and Sundays, especially by industry.

On Friday evening the power utility had warned of a high chance of weekend power cuts. It said some generating units were not working due to planned maintenance, while a “higher than expected” number were offline because of technical faults.

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