The power utility said it had also adapted a popular computer game to serve as a management tool for its maintenance programme.

“The power system has been stable throughout the last quarter, resulting in almost six months of no load-shedding,” it said in a statement.

“This is due to the Tetris maintenance planning tool – supporting the execution of more planned maintenance without load-shedding.”

In the game of Tetris, a player was required to fit different building blocks into a constrained space by ensuring that the orientation of the blocks was correct to fit into identified available spaces. These building blocks came in different shapes and sizes and had to be arranged in such a manner that the tower did not grow bigger than the constrained space.

“The same principle was used for the development of the Eskom Maintenance Tetris model,” the parastatal said.

Eskom’s planned maintenance took into account many complex variables that the Tetris game analogy used to simplify the maintenance planning methodology by associating the blocks in Tetris to planned shutdowns. If the maintenance tower grew bigger than the constrained space, Eskom would have to implement load-shedding.

“The critical difference between prior maintenance planning and the Tetris way of planning is that now it is more visual, user-friendly, and in real-time. The system is an automated online system that can be manipulated immediately should any of the variables in the system change.

“This enables senior executives to make informed decisions and come up with sustainable solutions regarding the planning of maintenance. Furthermore, the tool is currently being used in the group capital division as a planning tool for the delivery of the new build programme.

“Our prognosis is that there will be no load-shedding for summer, autumn, and going into winter. However, we are not completely out of the woods yet and all available levers will be used to avoid load-shedding, including electricity generated by independent power producers (IPPs), open cycle gas turbines (OCGTs), and demand response,” Eskom said.