Eskom’s board of directors has congratulated the electricity provider’s executive management team and its 46‚000 employees for working hard to stabilise its operational and financial performance over the past seven months‚ resulting in no load shedding being implemented during this period.

Board chairman Dr Ben Ngubane also commended contractors at Medupi‚ Kusile and Ingula power stations for their efforts in fast-tracking the completion dates of the three projects.

 Last week‚ Unit 3 of the Ingula Pumped Storage Scheme was synchronised to the national power grid‚ marking a key milestone towards the full commercial operation of the unit ahead of the scheduled deadline of January 2017.

 Eskom says all four units of Ingula‚ with a total installed capacity of 1 332MW‚ are also expected to come on stream before the end of this year‚ a move that will further help stabilise the power grid and to reduce the need to use diesel generators.

“Eskom has certainly turned the corner‚ and we are extremely proud of the performance of the Group Chief Executive Mr Brian Molefe and his team for extricating South Africa out of the clutches of load shedding‚ and doing so despite a constrained financial position‚” said Dr Ngubane.

 “The team has over the past few weeks managed to produce generation capacity that hasn’t been seen since 2014. The synchronisation of the first unit of the Ingula Pumped Storage Scheme ahead of schedule is indicative of the good progress that has been made thus far in the delivery of Eskom’s infrastructure programme.”

 Dr Ngubane said a stable power supply would not only boost economic growth but also enable Eskom and the municipalities to electrify the estimated 3.4 million households that were not connected to the national grid.