State-owned power utility Eskom plans to maximise weekend “opportunity” maintenance to ensure plant reliability and sustainability as it continues to prepare for the expected winter peak.
The group, as part of its “winter plan” from April 1 to the end of August, had started to ramp down planned maintenance and ramp up energy availability.
This was to ensure the power utility had sufficient capacity to meet demand while undertaking the required maintenance on its power station units.
Over the weekend, Eskom had undertaken “opportunity” maintenance to recover some of its power station units while demand for electricity was low and there was excess generating capacity.
“This followed a particularly tight week, which saw multiple trips of units at three power stations resulting in a loss of 3 535 MW. No load-shedding was implemented owing to the increased resilience that Eskom has built into the power system over the past eight months,” the utility said in an update to the public on Tuesday.
Capacity on Monday morning had reached 34 276 MW, with unplanned outages at 5 499 MW and partial load losses at 2 147 MW.