The completion of Kusile and Medupi power stations should be among Eskom’s pressing priorities as load-shedding continues to hamper the power utility’s ability to ensure that the lights stay on, an energy analyst has suggested.

Eskom has been load-shedding from Saturday because of a loss of generation capacity at its plants due to unplanned breakdowns.

On Thursday morning, Eskom announced that load-shedding would continue until Friday morning because it had lost generation capacity over Wednesday night, with breakdowns affecting more than 14,000MW of output.

It also said emergency reserves were inadequate to meet the electricity demand on Thursday.

Analyst Chris Yelland said on Thursday Eskom was in a situation where it had been unable to perform the necessary maintenance of plants. This was because it did not have the "space" because of unplanned breakdowns.

Medupi is five years behind schedule - completion deadline was 2015. Kusile, which was to have been completed in 2018, is now scheduled to be completed in 2021.

Apart from speeding up the completion of the two powers stations, Yelland said, another way of adding new generation capacity in the short term was to allow customers — whether households or business — to generate their own electricity.

This could be done by allowing households and businesses to install solar panels in the roofs of homes and businesses

“The more people have solar photovoltaic panels, the less electricity that Eskom has to deliver,” Yelland said.

He said this was the only way to ensure there was additional generation capacity in the short term as this could be done in six months to a year.

“We need to unlock regulatory processes to make it possible for customers to be part of the solution.”

Yelland also said the power that the department of energy sought to add to the grid was inadequate to address the shortfall.

Last month, the department published the request for information (RFI) designed to assess options to procure 2,000MW-3,000MW of power generation capacity that can be connected to the grid in the shortest time at the lowest cost.

The closing date for responses is January 31.

Yelland said the power that the department sought to procure was too little.

“Next week demand for power will grow as most factories will open. Demand will increase by 3,000MW next week.”