It’s been a hot minute since Eskom last brought load shedding into our lives, and even then, it was only for a couple of days. Ever since, South Africa’s primary power utility has kept the lights on, with no plans to turn them off again. Even with winter on the horizon, Eskom reckons it can deliver a stable power supply throughout. Whew.
“Eskom enters the 2026 winter season with a resilient power system, projecting a winter period of continued energy stability from 1 April to 31 August 2026. This positive outlook follows the successful conclusion of the summer period, during which the national grid operated with ongoing sustained reliability.”
Eskom’s big power play
Eskom claims that its ongoing energy success is owing to the ‘Generation Recovery Plan’, which is now “firmly embedded in day‑to‑day operations.” It’s now able to look beyond short-term recovery, allowing it to focus on maintaining its current energy output and expanding it further down the line. It’s worked thus far.
Eskom even has the figures to back it up. Where it was only maintaining a consistent energy supply of 9% as little as two years ago, it says it has brought that number up to 98.9% over the last financial year (1 April 2025 – 31 March 2026). That’s also helped it to reduce the massive diesel spend by about R26.9 billion compared to FY 2023.
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“These savings are a result of strengthened maintenance discipline and project delivery. Every megawatt we return contributes toward economic growth. The restoration of a consistent baseload electricity supply has enabled Eskom to be in a position to support industries in distress,” it added.
The power utility points to a 5.2GW reduction in unplanned losses to account for the additional capacity, in addition to 1.1GW from ‘demand‑side management programmes.’ “On this basis, Eskom has a surplus peak capacity of about 6GW over the winter period,” it said. Let’s just hope it can follow through, yeah?
