{"id":870061,"date":"2026-08-13T11:03:12","date_gmt":"2026-08-13T09:03:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=870061"},"modified":"2026-08-13T11:03:15","modified_gmt":"2026-08-13T09:03:15","slug":"south-africas-biggest-shopping-malls-are-dumping-eskom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/energy\/870061\/south-africas-biggest-shopping-malls-are-dumping-eskom\/","title":{"rendered":"South Africa’s biggest shopping malls are dumping Eskom"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Resilient Estate Investment Trust (REIT), a major South African property and mall owner, says it is increasingly trying to reduce its reliance on the country’s national electricity grid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The group owns several large malls across South Africa, including the Galleria Mall in KwaZulu-Natal, and the Irene Village Mall and Grove Mall in Gauteng.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In total, Resilient owns 28 retail spaces across South Africa, with a cumulative lettable area of 1.2 million square metres.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In its interim financial results for the six months ended June 2026, the group said it had continued to work to reduce its reliance on Eskom’s national energy supply.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Resilient has continued with the implementation of its strategy to reduce reliance on grid-provided electricity,” it said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It said this has been done to reduce the cost of electricity supply across its stores, while it waits for Eskom to move towards a more cost-efficient pricing model.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The price of electricity has nearly doubled over the last decade, as the compounding effect of steep tariff increases has put pressure on households and businesses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Resilient has responded to these challenges by increasingly moving towards renewable energy options for its properties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The group reported that by the end of the current financial year, it hopes to meet approximately 43.2% of its energy needs through renewable electricity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This includes solar projects at several large retail spaces, with plans to increase its total solar energy capacity to 94.4 MWp.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The group has also installed several Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS) to improve its ability to respond to outages in its retail spaces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This includes installations at the Mams’ and Jubilee Malls, increasing the group’s energy storage capacity by 10.0MWh to 30.7MWh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Resilient plans to expand its BESS systems to several other retail areas, including the Brits Mall, Limpopo Mall, and the Crossing Mokopane.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite the move away from the national grid, the group noted that further changes to electricity tariff structures could put pressure on its operations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This includes the ability of the retail owners’ tenants to absorb the rising utility costs and municipal rates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A growing trend<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Resilient’s move towards renewable electricity options follows a growing trend in South Africa of reducing reliance on the national grid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The move away from Eskom was previously prompted by load shedding, where the national energy supply could not sufficiently meet demand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While there has been no load shedding for 450 days, the shift away from Eskom has continued due to the country’s high electricity costs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Electricity consumption in South Africa has been consistently declining in recent years, dropping by 5% year-on-year in April 2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Year-on-year electricity consumption also showed consistent declines over the five months leading up to April 2026, indicating a waning reliance on the national grid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The reduction in electricity consumption has eased pressure on Eskom, but the national energy supplier has still struggled with declining production volumes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

April 2026 saw the largest year-on-year drop in production, with electricity generation down 9%, compared with a 6.9% year-on-year drop the previous month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While Eskom has historically been South Africa’s sole energy provider, the country is currently breaking the electricity giant’s monopoly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The government plans to unbundle Eskom into three distinct entities, each operating as an independent business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This plan is intended to create a diversified open energy market in South Africa, encouraging competition and reducing electricity costs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eskom has repeatedly pushed back against this plan, particularly in ceding control of the country’s energy transmission infrastructure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The transmission section of Eskom accounts for a large share of its earnings, and unbundling plans propose introducing an independent Transmission System Operator (TSO) in the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The plan to create a TSO has recently been shown to be feasible by the Eskom Restructuring Task Team (ERTT) in a report delivered to the presidency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Resilient financial results in South Africa for the six months ended June 2026<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Feature<\/strong><\/td>June 2026<\/strong><\/td>June 2025<\/strong><\/td><\/tr>
Revenue\u00a0<\/td>R1.99 billion<\/td>R1.93 billion<\/td><\/tr>
Profit<\/td>R1.35 billion<\/td>R1.39 billion<\/td><\/tr>
EBITDA<\/td>R1.41 billion<\/td>R1.3 billion<\/td><\/tr>
HEPS<\/td>R2.82<\/td>R2.26<\/td><\/tr>
Diluted HEPS<\/td>R2.81<\/td>R2.25<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/div><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Resilient, a major retail operator in South Africa, has massively increased its renewable energy systems to reduce reliance on the national grid.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":131,"featured_media":870097,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"pending","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9874],"tags":[1164,26155,26156,26153],"class_list":["post-870061","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-energy","tag-eskom","tag-galleria-mall","tag-irene-village-mall-2","tag-resilient"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/870061","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\/131"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=870061"}],"version-history":[{"count":25,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/870061\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":870127,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/870061\/revisions\/870127"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/870097"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=870061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=870061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=870061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}