Kgosientsho Ramokgopa was upbeat during a media briefing on Sunday where he reported that load shedding could ease due to a drop in electricity demand and the expected return of units to service.

"As we begin to see additional improvements, you're likely going to see that during part of the day we might not have load shedding. But of course, it's a function of the extent of the demand and the rate at which we do the planned maintenance," said Electricity Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa on Sunday 27 August, during his weekly media briefing on the implementation of the Energy Action Plan.

Eskom will begin to ramp up planned maintenance, after the power utility had decreased maintenance over the winter season, said Ramokgopa.

"As part of the winter outlook, we did indicate that we are going to slow down planned outages, and once we get out of a very difficult winter we are going to ramp it up, because we need to protect the generating units to ensure their sustainability and reliability in the future," he said.

Peak demand has dipped as we move out of the doldrums of winter to spring. "This gives us an opportunity to ramp up planned maintenance, because demand goes down, we need to improve the health of these," said Ramokgopa.

He said Eskom's unplanned capability loss factor - or unplanned losses - has dropped from 17,000MW,...