(Bloomberg) -- South Africa’s power utility Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd. forecast reduced blackouts for the country during upcoming winter months, when demand increases, due to improved electricity generation performance.

The rand strengthened more than 1% after Eskom CEO Dan Marokane said the utility expects power cuts, known locally as loadshedding, to be limited to 2,000 megawatts over the period of colder weather. 

South Africa has experienced record blackouts over the last two years as Eskom failed to meet demand with an unreliable fleet of mainly coal-fired power stations. The rotating power cuts have lasted as many as 12 hours a day and as recently as February deepened to 6,000 megawatts, known as Stage 6. But the country has gone 30 consecutive days through Friday without blackouts.

Marokane, who took over the role as CEO in March, said the improved performance wasn’t due to increased use of diesel turbines. Eskom’s diesel spend was 50% lower for that last month compared to the same period last year, and the amount of unit breakdowns also improved over the last year, according statistics shown in the utility’s presentation.

“What is yielding this performance of no loadshedding is actually the capacity coming from the improvement in generational performance,” Marokane said, adding that lower demand also played a part. “The big driver here that always pushes us into loadshedding is the reliability and availability of our generation fleet. We are focused on fixing that and when we solve that, everything else will fall into play.”

The rand was the best performer among emerging-market currencies tracked by Bloomberg on Friday, gaining 1.2% to 18.8148 per dollar by 3:20 p.m. in Johannesburg.

--With assistance from Robert Brand.

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