{"id":838503,"date":"2025-09-29T10:29:00","date_gmt":"2025-09-29T08:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=838503"},"modified":"2025-09-29T10:47:15","modified_gmt":"2025-09-29T08:47:15","slug":"a-huge-nail-in-the-coffin-for-load-shedding-in-south-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/energy\/838503\/a-huge-nail-in-the-coffin-for-load-shedding-in-south-africa\/","title":{"rendered":"A huge nail in the coffin for load shedding in South Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

South Africa has taken a huge step towards declaring the end of load shedding in the country, with Eskom announcing that Unit 6 of Kusile Power Station has officially entered commercial operation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This milestone means that the full 9,600MW capacity has been unlocked across Eskom\u2019s flagship power stations, Kusile and Medupi, giving significant support to the grid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It also marks the end of the construction of the two power stations, which have been billions of rands over budget and delayed by more than a decade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Medupi and Kusile were started in 2007, and the plan was for the power stations to be completed in 2014. However, neither met their deadline<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Both projects exceeded their budgets by a combined R300 billion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTogether, these stations form the backbone of the country\u2019s baseload electricity supply. With Unit 6 now online, Kusile and Medupi can deliver a combined 9,600MW when operating at full capacity, significantly strengthening South Africa\u2019s electricity supply,\u201d Eskom said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eskom said that since Unit 6\u2019s synchronisation in March, it has consistently met performance benchmarks, contributed to grid reliability, and helped meet electricity demand 97% of the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMedupi and Kusile will remain central to South Africa\u2019s electricity supply for many years to come. Both stations are designed for an operational lifespan of approximately 50 years,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Commercial operation indicates that the unit has passed all required testing and optimisation phases and is now fully integrated into Eskom\u2019s operational fleet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although the unit has been supplying electricity to the grid since its synchronisation on 23 March 2025, its contribution has not been reflected in official reporting until now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From this point onward, Unit 6\u2019s output will be included in the Energy Availability Factor (EAF) calculations, contributing to Eskom\u2019s overall performance metrics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is notable given that Eskom\u2019s EAF performance has already hit four-year highs, sitting above 70%. At these levels of performance, load shedding should not even be on the menu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The country has gone 135 consecutive days without load shedding, with only 26 hours recorded between 1 April and 25 September 2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite the turnaround in performance and confidence that outages can be kept at bay, Eskom and the energy department have not yet declared the end of load shedding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While performance has stated a miraculous turnaround, overall energy demand is also lower\u2014partly due to customers turning to alternatives and partly due to energy costs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The grid needs to add more capacity to support economic growth and also to account for the coming loss of generating units which will reach their end-of-life over the coming decade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To this point, Eskom said that it is accelerating efforts to expand its renewable energy portfolio to complement its baseload infrastructure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

South Africa has taken a huge step towards declaring the end of load shedding in the country, with Eskom announcing that Unit 6 of Kusile Power Station has officially entered commercial operation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":792582,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9874],"tags":[1164,10785,6999],"class_list":["post-838503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-energy","tag-eskom","tag-kusile","tag-medupi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/838503","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\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=838503"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/838503\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":838507,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/838503\/revisions\/838507"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/792582"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=838503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=838503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=838503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}