{"id":858025,"date":"2026-04-22T12:19:57","date_gmt":"2026-04-22T10:19:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=858025"},"modified":"2026-04-22T12:20:00","modified_gmt":"2026-04-22T10:20:00","slug":"eskom-gives-the-all-clear-for-winter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/energy\/858025\/eskom-gives-the-all-clear-for-winter\/","title":{"rendered":"Eskom gives the all-clear for winter"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Power utility Eskom says that South Africa is entering the winter months with a stable power system, with no hint of load shedding or national interruptions on the cards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Presenting its winter 2026 outlook, the power utility said its Generation Recovery Plan\u2014implemented to combat load shedding over the past few years\u2014is now firmly embedded in its day-to-day operations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because of this, it has moved beyond short-term recovery into a phase of stability and sustained energy security, which will keep homes, businesses and industries powered through the peak winter months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A notable achievement of the plan is Eskom maintaining a consistent energy supply of 98.9% in the last Financial Year (1 April 2025 to 31 March 2026), a marked improvement from 9% two years ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The winter outlook projects this will continue through the peak winter months and into the end of August 2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It said that additional capacity has been secured primarily through a 5.2GW reduction in unplanned losses, supplemented by 1.1GW from demand\u2010side management programmes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“On this basis, Eskom has a surplus peak capacity of about 6GW over the winter period,” it said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This ‘new normal’ has enabled Eskom to lower its base-case assumption for unplanned outages to approximately 12 GW, down from 13 GW in the previous winter outlook. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even under higher-stress conditions, where unplanned losses approach 14 GW, the system is expected to remain resilient, with no load shedding anticipated under the scenarios Eskom plans for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The group has kept load shedding at bay for 341 consecutive days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other notable improvements include reducing diesel expenditure by R26.9 billion since FY2023, with an overall reduced reliance on open-cycle gas turbine (OCGT) emergency peaking power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Diesel expenditure in FY2026 is at approximately R6.4 billion, or R10 billion lower year on year compared to FY2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Energy Availability Factor (EAF) improved by around 10.8 percentage points, from 54.55% in FY2023 to 65.35% in FY2026. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

While long-term EAF is still below the target of 70%, Eskom said it has reached or exceeded it on more than 83 occasions during FY26.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unplanned losses have been reduced by around 7.4GW, declining from 16.5GW to 9.1GW as
at 31 March 2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Planned maintenance increased, averaging 5.4GW. This is higher than the average of 4.7GW in FY2023 to peaks of around 8.0GW.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Load reduction and pricing problems<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

While South Africa has moved away from load shedding, problems in the energy sector persist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This includes cases of localised load reduction across the country, with energy costs for consumers putting households under immense pressure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eskom also faces a mountain of municipal debt, where over R100 billion is owed to the group.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Electricity Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa said that load reduction is just as bad as load shedding, as it still results in energy users sitting without power on rotating schedules.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He has made the commitment to end the practice in seven of nine provinces by the end of the calendar year, with the two remaining provinces\u2014Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal\u2014being addressed by Q1 2027.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eskom said it is working with the Department of Electricity and Energy and relevant stakeholders to eliminate load reduction. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It said its programme has already yielded results, with the Northern Cape and Western Cape now fully removed from load reduction schedules. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A key part of the programme is the installation of more than 600,000 smart meters, which improve network visibility, support better load management and help stabilise local electricity networks. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

By September 2026, Eskom expects that about 60% of feeders currently affected by load reduction, 573 out of 971, will be removed from load reduction, with the remaining feeders addressed progressively by 2027.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the pricing side, Ramokgopa said that Eskom and the government have committed to seeing out the MYPD6 pricing and that, going forward, they will restrict increases to inflation-linked or single-digit increases.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, this comes with the caveat that there will be categories for dealing with electricity price increases.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, Eskom will provide tailored tariffs for large energy users. Meanwhile, the free basic electricity programme will be increased beyond the current 50kWh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another caveat for energy users is that even single-digit increases could easily double or triple the rate of inflation-linked salary adjustments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is the case with the increases in 2026 and 2027, where Eskom has been granted tariff hikes of 8.8% – almost triple the rate of headline inflation (circa 3%).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The headline price increases also do not factor in other price adjustments – such as the increases to fixed fees – which easily push effective price increases far beyond what is claimed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Power utility Eskom says that South Africa is entering the winter months with a stable power system, with no hint of load shedding or national interruptions on the cards.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":842898,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9874],"tags":[1164,22448],"class_list":["post-858025","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-energy","tag-eskom","tag-winter-outlook"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/858025","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=858025"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/858025\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":858035,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/858025\/revisions\/858035"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/842898"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=858025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=858025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=858025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}