Pretoria - The backlog of maintenance at power stations should be resolved at the end of 2013, with the first unit of the Medupi power station expected to come on board in the same year, Eskom said on Friday.
"We cannot continue our strategy of shifting the maintenance ... some of our power plants are very old. Some are 30-years-old ... need a significant amount of maintenance.
"We are doing high level, unprecedented levels of maintenance this time of the year as we go into winter. We've not done this before to address the backlog and to improve the safety and reliability of our plants," Eskom Chief Executive Officer Brain Dames said.
The utility was presenting its second quarterly state of the system briefing on Friday.
"The objective is that by the end of next year we would have eliminated the backlog," explained Dames.
The challenge was that the utility did not have enough space to do its maintenance putting the maintenance cycle out of sync.
According to the utility, the backlog of scheduled maintenance has been reduced from 36 units in May 2011 to 26 units.
"The challenge is not necessarily meeting the country's capacity needs, it's really that together with the reserves in order for us to perform the maintenance.
In the last quarter, plant performance was not at a peak at some plants.
"Over the past months maintenance has increased significantly..We have averaged about 12% of our plant out on planned maintenance in January, that is substantially higher than in previous years," noted Dames.
However, the challenge was that the utility did not have enough space to do its maintenance putting the maintenance cycle out of sync.
Maintenance would be done over the course of the winter season.
In the winter months demand peaked was as high as between 2000 mw - 3000 mw, which can be as much as the combined usage of the country's SADC neighbouring countries. Evening peak times are between 5 and 9pm.
The winter demand is projected to be just under 37000 mw. Eskom was still impacted by poor quality coal at some plants. Currently coal stockpiles are at 39 days which is adequate, said Dames.
Meanwhile, in the Public Enterprises Budget Vote this year, the department indicated that this financial year 260 mw was to be added to the electricity system.
Government was committed to ensuring security of supply, Public Enterprises Minister Malusi Gigaba said. "We do have long term plans," he said, adding that government was resolute to avoid the "painful rotational blackouts" of 2008.
South Africa's power supply over the next 18 weeks would be tight, particularly the next few weeks.
"Particularly the next few weeks is expected to be the tightest we've endured thus far," Gigaba told media.
Gigaba has approved a strategy to keep the lights on, including initiatives like enhancing reliability of electricity supply from electricity imports as well as procuring about 500mw of additional generation capacity from municipalities.
The strategy is also aimed at reducing maintenance backlogs. Its implementation is monitored by the department weekly.
Eskom has signed up 373 mw from independent power producers.
On whether a tender has been put out for nuclear energy, the minister said: "The decisions about nuclear [energy]are yet to be made known by the Minister of Energy [Dipuo Peters]. What we have done at government level thus far is to establish an inter-ministerial committee that is convened by the Deputy President that will set the framework for our participation as a country but there is no date yet for when the nuclear tender will come out. We are still a distance from there."
On issues around tariffs, Dames said Eskom was in the process of engaging stakeholders. "The engagement process has started, it is extensive and the challenge is to ensure that we touch all stakeholders prior to us submitting our[tariff] application in about July," he explained.
