Johannesburg - Winter is on the way with extra power use but earlier this week Eskom had a safety gap of nearly 10 000MW.
The utility said the improved capacity was a result of the ongoing maintenance programme which meant better performance by the power stations.
At 9.11pm on Monday, Eskom had 37 067MW in available capacity and a forecast demand of 27 387MW during the evening peak, leaving excess capacity of 9 680MW, the power utility said.
“This stunning performance flows from another good opportunity maintenance weekend which saw the total unplanned breakdowns (UCLF) averaging around 3 945MW. We are still meeting our target of limiting unplanned breakdowns to below 5 000MW as this is vital for sustained generation performance,” said an Eskom spokesperson.
“Energy availability continues to improve and now sits at 77.02 percent year-to-date, with unplanned breakdowns at 10.98 percent and planned maintenance at 12 percent, an indication that we are slowly making progress towards our target of 80:10:10 (ie 80 percent energy availability factor (EAF), 10 percent planned maintenance and 10 percent unplanned maintenance).”
Eskom plans as much maintenance as possible during summer and on weekends when the demand is lower, and reduces this in winter.
“We have already started to ramp down planned maintenance and ramp up energy availability for the expected winter peak so that we will have sufficient capacity to meet demand whilst we still conduct the required maintenance on our power station units,” said Eskom.
There’s been no load shedding for more than nine months.
Although the power demand was lower year-on-year, Eskom’s capacity was higher than it had been for three years, said Eskom group executive for generation Matshela Koko in Wednesday's Business Report. “The real story is the improved operational performance of Eskom,” he said.