Eskom finds itself between a rock and a hard place on diesel overspending - CEO

Andre de Ruyter says they have had to find the money for carrying out maintenance and paying for diesel from other sources such as savings.

Eskom CEO Andre de Ruyter on Thursday issued a load shedding warning, saying outages remain a real risk.

He said Eskom had the lowest unplanned capacity loss in a very long time, which was a positive reflection on the performance of the system. De Ruyter has been giving systems update on the system.

The country may be on a relatively good run with no load shedding since 19 November, but the Eskom CEO said South Africans should still use electricity sparingly.

De Ryter tells John Perlman more.

That's a rock and a hard place that we find ourselves in, where we want to take our units to do reliability maintenance. This costs a lot of money but because we take those units out we increase the risk of load shedding and because we want to avoid load shedding as much as possible, from time to time we do burn diesel inorder to fuel our open-cycle gas turbines.

Andre de Ruyter, Chief executive officer - Eskom

That, in turn, consumes cash and further constraints our liquidity. It is a tough balance that we have to maintain.

Andre de Ruyter, Chief executive officer - Eskom

We've resolved to prioritise maintenance for generation. We have had to find money for carrying out maintenance and paying for the diesel from other sources, for example, from our savings.

Andre de Ruyter, Chief executive officer - Eskom

Listen below for the full interview...

More from Local