The Ministry of Electricity says the return to service of unit 1 at Kusile Power Station marks a critical milestone in the quest to "recover South Africa's economy".

Eskom on Monday announced that the unit had returned to service a month and a half ahead of schedule since it was taken offline late last year.

The ministry said the Minister in the Presidency for Electricity, Dr Kgosientsho Ramokgopa, has welcomed the development.

"The return of the unit, which had been out of commission, together with unit 2 and 3 since August 2022 following safety concerns with the structural integrity of the stack, comes two months ahead of schedule and adds 800MW onto the grid.

"This marks significant overall improvements to generation performance with Kusile Unit 3, which came back online on 29 September 2023, also returning back to service two months ahead of schedule.

"The third of the units (Unit 2) is now expected to similarly return to service in November 2023, whilst Unit 5 will come into commercial operation in December 2023," the statement read.

The Ministry highlighted the impact that the return of the unit will have.

"The return of the Kusile units represents a critical milestone in our quest to recover South Africa's economy, protect jobs, advance universal access and improve the quality of life.

"The Minister remains focused on bolstering the country's electricity generating capacity by giving accelerated attention to the expansion and strengthening of transmission infrastructure to accommodate new renewable generation capacity.

"The Minister congratulates Eskom's Generation team for the sterling hard work to bring back stability and credibility to the Eskom generation fleet and reducing the intensity and severity of load shedding," the statement said.