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President Jacob Zuma has this afternoon, 06 May 2016, expressed his satisfaction with the steady progress that Eskom has made in improving its operational performance, a move that has resulted in a more resilient power system that has seen no load shedding for nearly nine successive months.

President Zuma visited Eskom’s head office Megawatt Park today where he met with the Eskom Board, executive management team and employees.  The President’s monitoring and evaluation visit to Eskom headquarters forms part of government’s concerted efforts to provide support to state-owned companies (SOCs) while also implementing the reforms that would make them more effective in delivering on their mandates.

"I am happy with the progress that Eskom has made. By this time last year the situation was gloomy and there was no light at the end of the tunnel. The company is moving in the right direction and that gives us a bit of comfort, “said President Zuma.

Through his interaction with staff and management, the President was assured that Eskom had significantly improved its plant performance since August last year, resulting in no load shedding being implemented for nearly nine consecutive months. The reduction in unplanned outages (breakdowns) has contributed to improvements of plant availability and the resultant sharp reduction in the usage of open cycle gas turbines (OCGTs).

In addition, Eskom will continue with their rigorous programme of planned maintenance without implementing load shedding while also minimising usage of the OCGTs / diesel generators.

Eskom plant availability has improved from 69.9% in October last year to 76.3% at the end of April this year, the President was appraised.

Furthermore, in terms of Eskom's existing Generation Sustainability Strategy, the aim is to achieve 80% plant availability, 10% planned maintenance and 10% unplanned maintenance over the medium term. The adherence to regular scheduled maintenance is managed through the Tetris planning tool which schedule 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 500MW for winter and 11 500 MW for summer.

Issued by the Presidency