Eskom says weekend maintenance ‘festival’ a success
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.
Comments
Press Office
Announcements
What's On
Subscribe to improve your user experience...
Option 1 (equivalent of R125 a month):
Receive a weekly copy of Creamer Media's Engineering News & Mining Weekly magazine
(print copy for those in South Africa and e-magazine for those outside of South Africa)
Receive daily email newsletters
Access to full search results
Access archive of magazine back copies
Access to Projects in Progress
Access to ONE Research Report of your choice in PDF format
Option 2 (equivalent of R375 a month):
All benefits from Option 1
PLUS
Access to Creamer Media's Research Channel Africa for ALL Research Reports, in PDF format, on various industrial and mining sectors
including Electricity; Water; Energy Transition; Hydrogen; Roads, Rail and Ports; Coal; Gold; Platinum; Battery Metals; etc.
Already a subscriber?
Forgotten your password?
Receive weekly copy of Creamer Media's Engineering News & Mining Weekly magazine (print copy for those in South Africa and e-magazine for those outside of South Africa)
➕
Recieve daily email newsletters
➕
Access to full search results
➕
Access archive of magazine back copies
➕
Access to Projects in Progress
➕
Access to ONE Research Report of your choice in PDF format
RESEARCH CHANNEL AFRICA
R4500 (equivalent of R375 a month)
SUBSCRIBEAll benefits from Option 1
➕
Access to Creamer Media's Research Channel Africa for ALL Research Reports on various industrial and mining sectors, in PDF format, including on:
Electricity
➕
Water
➕
Energy Transition
➕
Hydrogen
➕
Roads, Rail and Ports
➕
Coal
➕
Gold
➕
Platinum
➕
Battery Metals
➕
etc.
Receive all benefits from Option 1 or Option 2 delivered to numerous people at your company
➕
Multiple User names and Passwords for simultaneous log-ins
➕
Intranet integration access to all in your organisation