Zuma pleased with improved operational performance at Eskom

South African President Jacob Zuma on Friday expressed his satisfaction with the steady progress that electricity utility Eskom has made in improving its operational performance.

This has resulted in a more resilient power system that has seen no load shedding for nearly nine successive months, Zuma said after visiting the parastatal's headquarters in Johannesburg.

Zuma met with the Eskom Board, executive management team and employees.

Zuma'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 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 pledges to continue with their rigorous programme of planned maintenance without implementing load shedding while also minimising usage of the OCGTs/diesel generators.

South Africans suffered from load shedding for almost one year beginning from November 2014 due to poor maintenance at Eskom plants.

Eskom has been working hard to restore its generation capability. Now its plant availability has improved from 69.9 percent in October last year to 76.3 percent at the end of April this year.

Furthermore, in terms of Eskom's existing Generation Sustainability Strategy, the aim is to achieve 80 percent plant availability, 10 percent planned maintenance and 10 percent 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.

Eskom provides more than 95 percent of electricity consumed by South Africans. Endit