The first part of power utility Eskom’s maintenance drive has been completed without the parastatal having to implement load-shedding over the weekend.

The State-owed utility on Friday embarked on a three-day maintenance “festival” to improve the performance and reliability of its power generating units ahead of the expected peak winter demand.

A number of generating units, equating to 2 303 MW, were taken offline for successful planned maintenance and broken down units were repaired, bringing 1 453 MW of generating capacity back to service over the weekend.

Eskom said in a statement that the use of emergency reserves, open-cycle gas turbines and pumped storage schemes to bolster capacity during the maintenance drive had enabled the utility to avoid load-shedding.

Currently, 64% of Eskom’s installed baseload power stations were past their midlife, requiring longer outages and extended restoration time than planned, Eskom pointed out.

“The focus of the maintenance festival is to ensure long-term reliability of the plant, as well as restore units that are currently offline due to technical faults,” acting CEO Brian Molefe said in a statement.

However, despite this, the utility warned that the power system would remain significantly constrained during the rest of the week.