Gordhan said Eskom was working around the clock to prevent a dark Christmas.
He said that between December 15 and January 15, power cuts were not expected.
Gordhan said he had instructed the Eskom board to put together an action plan on a week-by-week basis.
“That plan must state very clearly who is taking responsibility, and what is expected in terms of assessing the key parts of the power station and where the weakness in this power station might be,” he said.
Gordhan said Eskom was unable to meet the demand of megawatts required. He said Eskom was mostly concerned about the unplanned breakages at plants.
He said investment for repairs at plants from 2010 onwards had been inadequate.
“Not enough money was put into the so-called big repairs themselves,” he said.
Other factors that might have played a role included the quality of maintenance at plants.
“Some of that is attributable to technical skills within Eskom, some of it are attributable to contractors that were brought in to undertake these repairs… and the supervision of those contractors and consequence management if the contractors don’t do what they were supposed to do,” said Gordhan.
He said the instruction to Eskom was to get the power cuts out of the way as soon as possible.