Eskom remains committed to recovering its operational performance
22 October 2020
Presenting its state of the system briefing today, Eskom committed to recovering its operational performance and restoring the stability of the power system. Eskom has not implemented rotational loadshedding since 08 September 2020, and for three successive weeks during this period managed to meet South Africa’s electricity needs with minimal use of open-cycle gas turbines (OCGTs).
While acknowledging this as a positive and encouraging development, Eskom Group Chief Executive, André de Ruyter cautioned that more work still needs to be done to achieve operational stability and to restore the security of energy supply for the country.
“Over the past eight months we redoubled our efforts and commenced with the implementation of modifications to repairs to the design defects at Medupi and Kusile power stations, which is yielding the desired results and increasing available capacity for the system. We also continue to implement our Turnaround Plan which is geared towards improving Eskom’s performance to achieve sustainability and guarantee security of electricity supply,” said De Ruyter.
Alongside repairing the design defects that have hobbled the performance of the new power stations, Eskom has focused on conducting reliability maintenance on the rest of the power stations, which is aimed at improving the performance of Eskom’s aging generation fleet.