Eskom CEO Andre de Ruyter says SA’s power utility has adopted a comprehensive maintenance plan which will enable it to perform the necessary rigorous maintenance on its power plants to avoid the deterioration of its generation plants.
De Ruyter told a news conference on Friday that the maintenance plan, which Eskom took to the board this week, entailed that the power utility would revert to the philosophy of a maintenance schedule.
“What it entails is that instead of deferring maintenance – scheduled maintenance – and instead of postponing general overhauls and mid-life overhauls, we intend to return to the cycle of maintaining our plants as per original equipment manufacture guidelines.
“In the past we neglected to perform scheduled maintenance as required, and those legacies are coming home and causing us to have unreliable equipment,” De Ruyter said.
De Ruyter said the amended maintenance schedule would result in an increased probability of load-shedding by Eskom over the medium term while it fixed the system.
“We will unfortunately expect some increase in load-shedding. We will have to do this in a structured, careful, managed way. We have to give us the space to fix what we need.
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BY: ERNEST MABUZA
SOURCE: TMG DIGITAL
