South African major cities experienced power blackouts today as generation shortages force the state electricity utility, Eskom, to impose rolling blackouts across the country. The problem was traced to one of the power generating units at the Koeberg nuclear power station tripping off, forcing the utility to embark on "load-shedding".

The Koeberg nuclear power station, on the outskirts of Cape Town, is South Africa's only commercial nuclear power station producing 12.7 billion kWh or about 6% of South Africa's total electricity consumption.

Eskom has repeatedly warned that under-investment in electricity generation facilities will harm the long term growth of the economy and called for massive investment between now and 2010.

In a statement Eskom has said the current load shedding will last most of the week and have published a schedule on their web site. (http://loadshedding.eskom.co.za/).