Former Eskom chief operating officer Jan Oberholzer will remain at the utility in a new role to oversee projects aimed at pulling South Africa out of a power crisis which is set to worsen as winter arrives and demand for electricity increases.

It is understood that Oberholzer, who retired on 30 April 2023, has signed a contract to stay on, but not in his former capacity of COO, which carried the responsibility of overseeing all Eskom's operations within generation, transmission and distribution.

His appointment comes at a crucial time for the country, with the intensity of rolling blackouts in the coming months likely to deepen to levels not seen before, due mainly to long-term outages at Koeberg, Eskom's nuclear power plant, as well as Medupi and Kusile, it's two newest and biggest coal-fired power stations.

In an exclusive interview with EE Business Intelligence last month, Oberholzer said that 2023 would continue to be a difficult year in terms of power outages, but work was on schedule to address the problems at all three plants, and to extend the operating licence of Koeberg for another 20 years.

But he also warned that near-term targets to raise the utility's overall energy availability factor (EAF) - which measures the availability of all the units in the Eskom fleet to produce electricity over a certain period - were likely to be missed.

This was largely due to repair work being undertaken on Kusile units 1,...