Eskom has achieved a rare milestone in its long struggle to stabilise South Africa’s power grid, with unplanned outages falling to 7.3GW – the first time the figure has dipped below the 8GW mark since December 2020.
The improvement, announced on Friday, signals progress in the utility’s generation recovery plan, which was designed to tackle years of instability and chronic load shedding.
Grid Stability Holding Firm
With just a week left in Eskom’s winter outlook period, the utility said its available generation capacity of 30.4GW remains comfortably above peak demand forecasts of 25.4GW. An additional 4.8GW is expected to return to service by Monday evening, further strengthening supply.
Since mid-May, South Africa has gone without a single hour of load shedding. Between 1 April and 21 August, only 26 hours of blackouts were recorded — representing a 97% success rate in meeting national demand.
Improved Plant Performance
Key performance indicators show the generation fleet is becoming more stable:
Planned maintenance averaged 5.5GW last week.
The energy availability factor has risen to nearly 65%.
Kusile Unit 6, already contributing 720MW since March, is expected to be fully commissioned by September.
Breakdown levels also eased, with the unplanned capability loss factor improving to 27.85%, compared with 25.81% a year earlier but showing steady weekly gains.
Diesel Spending Under Control
Eskom has also curbed reliance on costly open-cycle gas turbines, cutting usage to 0.78% of generation from 1.21% the week before. Diesel spending remains within budget — a notable turnaround from years of overspending.
The utility’s May winter outlook suggested load shedding could be avoided if breakdowns were kept under 13GW. Having held outages more than 5GW below that ceiling, Eskom has surpassed expectations and restored some confidence in its recovery strategy.
Eskom will publish its summer outlook next month. Analysts say the latest performance figures point to a significantly improved risk profile, a scenario that would have seemed unlikely just a year ago.
Main Image: Eskom
