{"id":835861,"date":"2025-08-24T14:34:54","date_gmt":"2025-08-24T12:34:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=835861"},"modified":"2025-08-24T14:35:01","modified_gmt":"2025-08-24T12:35:01","slug":"eskom-hits-5-year-milestone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/energy\/835861\/eskom-hits-5-year-milestone\/","title":{"rendered":"Eskom hits 5-year milestone\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Eskom has reached 100 consecutive days without load shedding, with the state-owned entity patting itself on the back for returning to 2020 levels of unplanned breakdowns. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The state-owned utility said that the latest accomplishment builds on the momentum of 2024, as it delivered 352 loadshedding-free days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is also a significant improvement from the 36 days recorded in FY2023\/24, its lowest performance in recent years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The group said that the progress stems from the Generation Recovery Plan that was implemented in March 2023 as a way to stabilise and strengthen the national grid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the current FY2025\/26 financial year, Eskom has recorded 26 hours of loadshedding and delivered 144 days of reliable electricity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe resilience of our generation fleet continues to improve, with unplanned losses due to breakdowns now at 6,035 MW\u2014well below the 7,000 MW threshold,\u201d said the state-owned utility. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe last time Eskom recorded unplanned losses below this level was on 27 September 2020<\/strong>, when the figure stood at 6,829 MW.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It said that the operational gains are stepping stones towards the larger goal, which is ending load shedding for good. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEskom remains fully committed to supporting South Africa\u2019s electricity reform agenda and accelerating the transition to a competitive, sustainable energy future.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOur focus is not only on maintaining operational excellence, but also on enabling the structural reforms that will shape the future of the energy industry, for the benefit of all South Africans.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not so fast <\/h2>\n\n\n
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Despite Eskom\u2019s praise of its performance, the Nedbank Group Economic Unit<\/a>\u2019s latest energy tracker shows that the uptick in renewable energy sources primarily drives South Africa\u2019s power supply improvements.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Its analysis showed that power demand in South Africa far outstrips available supply by as much as 24% versus the 2019-2021 average.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This has forced Eskom to turn to load reductions, Open Cycle Gas Turbine usage and international imports to stop load shedding. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although Eskom\u2019s dependence on this \u201ccompensatory load\u201d has eased dramatically since peaking in 2023, this isn\u2019t necessarily due to Eskom\u2019s performance. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nedbank\u2019s economists said that the reduced pressure on Eskom was made possible by improvements in excess demand, or South Africans moving away from the national utility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDemand for energy continues to decline, signifying a structural break from reliance on Eskom. Only modest improvements have been made on the supply front,\u201d the bank said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The economists pointed to a sharp uptick in renewable and alternative energy investment post-2022, when the government scrapped licensing requirements for private generation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This led to a surge in renewable investment,\u00a0 including solar PV and batteries. 2025 has seen another resurgence, followed by investment stalls in 2023 and 2024, with around 7,000 MW of renewable energy installed on the grid.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nevertheless, Nedbank noted that South Africa\u2019s energy security remains compromised. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is evident in that Eskom still relies on compensatory measures to meet South Africa\u2019s needs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While Eskom has noted an improved energy availability factor (EAF) and reduced breakdowns to under 13,000MW, the reality is that these levels are still far off previous levels.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A plotted timeline shows recent breakdown levels are as bad as in 2022. Eskom\u2019s latest data shows a positive move in this direction, but outages still remain around 10,000 MW when looking at a broader picture. <\/p>\n\n\n

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Eskom has seen unplanned losses drop to levels last seen in 2020, but external analysis shows that the country’s energy supply remains constrained. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":95,"featured_media":793330,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9874],"tags":[1164,1799],"class_list":["post-835861","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-energy","tag-eskom","tag-nedbank"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/835861","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/95"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=835861"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/835861\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":835864,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/835861\/revisions\/835864"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/793330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=835861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=835861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=835861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}