Photo by: Duane Daws
State-owned Eskom says it continues to progress the maintenance of its power generating plants, despite national demand increasing by nearly 2 000 MW on Monday as business activities resumed following the seasonal break.
Demand was expected to further increase from Wednesday as the new school year began.
“[We] expect the system to remain stable throughout the rest of the summer period following a rigorous programme of planned maintenance over the festive season.
“Power station units that had been taken offline for maintenance during the festive season to take advantage of the low demand of electricity are now being brought back to service to meet increasing demand of electricity,” it said in a statement.
The parastatal said last week that it was able to successfully conduct maintenance on 9 000 MW of its plant at the peak of the maintenance festival over the December period.
It was now ramping down its planned maintenance, bringing it to levels of 3 000 MW to 5 000 MW, to accommodate higher electricity demand.