“Eskom’s maintenance teams worked hard over the long weekend and were able to perform planned maintenance on 2 303MW of generating plant. They also returned 1 453MW of generating capacity back to service over this period.

“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,” said Eskom’s acting Chief Executive Brian Molefe.

The utility said the first part of its planned maintenance drive without load shedding since Friday, 24 April had been a success.

The power system continues to remain significantly constrained and will be so for the rest of this week, said Eskom in a statement on Monday night.

Eskom used its emergency reserves, open-cycle gas turbines (OCGTs) and pumped storage schemes to augment capacity while the maintenance drive was underway.

“We would like to thank all electricity users for responding to our message to save. Every little bit of saving counts in reducing the need to implement load shedding,” said Molefe.

The utility called on all customers to continue reducing the load on the electricity grid by switching off geysers, air conditioners, pool pumps and all non-essential appliances throughout the day, which will reduce electricity demand.

“As the nights begin to get colder, we request electricity users to consider energy efficient ways of keeping warm,” said Eskom