Eskom’s newly-reconstituted board on Thursday expressed its support on the strides made by executive management in turning around the company’s operational and financial performance, as well as the overall strategy of sustaining this momentum.

This comes after a two-day board induction session led by interim chairperson Zethembe Khoza in which Eskom’s key performance targets were assessed.

Khoza noted that Eskom had not implemented load-shedding for the past 23 months, and that the plan was to continue implementing appropriate levels of planned maintenance to ensure long-term plant reliability.

He said the reduction in unplanned outages contributed to improvements of plant availability and the resultant reduction in the usage of costly open cycle gas turbines (diesel generators).

“In terms of Eskom’s existing Generation Sustainability Strategy, our aim is to achieve 80% plant availability, 10% planned maintenance and 10% unplanned maintenance over the medium-term,” Khoza said in a statement.

“The adherence to regular scheduled maintenance is managed through the Tetris planning tool which schedules outages based on forecasted demand and maintenance requirements. A key aspect of this includes having a strict winter and summer maintenance budget that comprises 8.5 GW for winter and 11.5 GW for summer.”

The power utility’s board was beefed up last month by Public Enterprises Minister, Lynne Brown, with the appointment of four new interim nonexecutive directors and the appointment of an interim group chief executive, Johnny Dladla.

Khoza also welcomed the continued drive by Dladla to meet with all of Eskom’s critical stakeholders, including employees, in an effort to not only share executive management’s vision, but to also understand stakeholder needs.

On Monday, Dladla, accompanied by his executive management team, met with the company’s senior and middle management and emphasised Brown’s and the board’s mandate and expectations.

Eskom said similar engagements with other stakeholders were scheduled for the next few weeks.

Meanwhile, Dladla would on Thursday officiate the signing of the $1.5-billion loan agreement between Eskom and China Development Bank.