Eskom CEO André de Ruyter answers the big question — What went wrong?

Poor project management, cash flow problems, and underestimating the extent of the neglect at some power stations are major reasons why Eskom’s maintenance programme has not gone according to plan.
South Africa is currently experiencing stage 2 load-shedding after breakdowns at several power stations hit Eskom on Friday and over the weekend.
Two units at Duvha and three units at Tutuka power station are offline, and Eskom has reported problems at Kendal.
Matimba and Majuba, usually very reliable, have also experienced some trips.
The brand new Kusile power station is entirely offline, with Eskom hoping to return its Unit 1 generator to service at around 13:00 on Wednesday, 2 February.
In total, Eskom has seen 4,000MW of breakdowns since Friday afternoon. On Monday and Tuesday, there were even more outages, and units that were meant to return to service haven’t
According to Eskom COO Jan Oberholzer, there is no evidence to suggest that these outages were caused by sabotage, as was the case with some incidents last year.
Eskom CEO André de Ruyter broke down the outages on Eskom’s generating network as follows:
- 4,435 MW planned maintenance
- 8,093 MW full load losses
- 5,368 MW partial load losses
- 13,461 MW total outages
Promises broken — short-term pain for long-term gain
Shortly after taking the reins at South Africa’s state-owned power utility in 2020, De Ruyter told media that he aimed to end persistent load-shedding by September 2021.
De Ruyter said the Eskom board approved a comprehensive maintenance plan, which included general overhauls and midlife overhauls of its ageing coal-powered fleet.
This was to be short-term pain for long-term gain — 18 months of load-shedding with the promise of never having to load-shed again.
What followed was the two worst load-shedding years in Eskom’s history.
The failure drew sharp criticism from quarters baying for De Ruyter’s head, such as the Black Business Council, the National Union of Mineworkers, and the South African Federation of Trade Unions.
Energy analysts like Mike Rossouw, who says that De Ruyter should remain at the helm, also sounded the alarm over what he said was a total collapse at Eskom.
Rossouw said that Eskom’s planning has collapsed, is suffering from a lack of skills, and that the execution of maintenance work is way below what it should be.
De Ruyter acknowledged these criticisms during a media briefing on Wednesday that was called on short notice after Eskom announced the return of stage 2 load-shedding.
“It is certainly disappointing that we were not able to make a dent in this unreliable system to do more planned maintenance,” De Ruyter stated.
“A lot of the planned maintenance that was carried out did not meet our expectations in terms of what was done.”
De Ruyter explained that in many cases, the maintenance required long-lead-time spares that must be ordered two years in advance.
Generating units were taken offline for maintenance when their outage readiness indicators — such as the availability of spares — was not as high as they should have been.
“Inadequate project management and liquidity challenges constrained our ability to place orders up-front,” said De Ruyter.
The Eskom chief also said they underestimated the extent of the maintenance required in many cases.
“Once you open up your boiler, you find that owing to the age of the plant, the scope of work that you had originally anticipated was bigger than you thought,” he said.
This has also contributed to units remaining offline for much longer than planned.
“We’re working hard to address that and get that right,” he said.
Eskom group generation chief Philip Dukashe said that the key to successful planned outages is readiness — making sure the necessary resources are available before taking a generating unit offline.
“You need to be at 80% readiness before the start of an outage,” said Dukashe.
For the Duvha power station outage, he said there were several incidents of poor performance.
Eskom will look at how its staff and contractors performed and what actions can be taken to prevent such poor performance in future.
Units at Kendal have been offline for more than a year to fix precipitators to ensure the plant’s emissions are within limits.
“We were not prepared for the start of the outage,” said Dukashe.
As a result, a lot of the work needed at Kendal has not been done.
Trip-outs at the usually reliable Matimba and Majuba power plants were caused by delays in replacing control and instrumentation systems.
This is because Eskom has not yet had the opportunity to bring these units offline to perform the maintenance.
“We are moving to where we have enabling contracts and long-term contracts in place,” Dukashe stated.
“It’s taking longer to get there than we’d hoped, but our procurement manager and power station managers are really driving that.”