A week after a so-called ‘maintenance festival’ during which technicians carried out planned maintenance on 2 303 MW of generating plants and returned 1 453 MW of power to the national grid, energy utility Eskom said on Sunday that it had performed additional maintenance over the long weekend, returning 2 304 MW of generation capacity to the grid.

The parastatal outlined in a statatement that it was able to perform maintenance on 2 608 MW of generating plant over the three-day weekend, taking the 575 MW Duvha Unit 2, the 190 MW Hendrina Unit 6, the 114 MW Komati Unit 9, that 475 MW Kriel Unit 6, the 669 MW Majuba Unit 6 and the 585 MW Tutuka Unit 4 offline for scheduled maintenance.

Eskom had since returned the Duvha Unit 2, Majuba Unit 6, Kriel Unit 5 and Tutuka Unit 4 to service.

“Going forward, we plan to continue with our maintenance drive in an effort to close in on the backlog that has accumulated over the years owing to the ‘keeping the lights on’ commitment.

“We appeal to electricity users once more to continue using electricity sparingly to allow us enough room to continue with the requisite maintenance so that in the long run our power stations can perform more efficiently,” said Eskom acting CEO Brian Molefe.

The utility needed a minimum of 3 000 MW and maximum of 5 000 MW buffer either through supply-side or demand-side options to close the maintenance backlog and avoid load-shedding.