South Africa reached 300 consecutive days without load shedding on Thursday, a milestone Eskom said underscores the sustained recovery of its generation fleet.
The state power utility said its energy availability factor has been consistently above 65% for the financial year to date, from 1 April 2025 to 12 March 2026, coming in at 65.85%. The fleet has achieved or exceeded the 70% EAF mark on 83 occasions over that period.
Average unplanned outages have fallen sharply. Between 6 and 12 March, unplanned outages averaged 7.22GW, down 53% from 15.38GW during the same week last year. The unplanned capacity loss factor for the week was 14.85%, down from 32.07% a year ago.
Eskom said it has 5.86GW in cold reserve due to excess capacity and plans to bring 3.33GW of generation capacity online ahead of the evening peak on Monday.
Diesel expenditure has plunged. For the financial year to date, diesel spending is R8.58-billion lower than the same period last year, a 57.35% reduction. Between 1 April 2025 and 12 March 2026, Eskom generated 1 075GWh from open-cycle gas turbine (OCGT) plants at a diesel cost of R6.38-billion, compared to 2 499GWh at a cost of R14.96-billion over the same period a year earlier. Diesel usage has declined consistently month on month since May 2025.
The year-to-date OCGT load factor has decreased to 3.79%, well below the 8.81% recorded in the prior period.
Illegal connections
South Africa has experienced only 26 hours of load shedding in the current financial year, all recorded in April and May 2025.
Planned maintenance has increased, with the planned capacity loss factor averaging 13.81% compared to 10.21% in the previous financial year, as Eskom works to ensure environmental compliance and improve long-term reliability.
While the generation picture has improved markedly, Eskom said illegal connections and meter tampering continue to damage infrastructure and pose safety risks. The utility is implementing load reduction as a temporary measure in high-risk areas to protect communities and the network.
Eskom has launched a phased programme to eliminate load reduction by 2027, targeting 971 feeders serving approximately 1.69 million customers across all provinces out of its total base of 7.2 million.
To date, 151 feeders have been removed from load reduction — about 56% of the year-end target of 271 feeders. An estimated 199 160 customers are now benefiting, though 378 187 customers, or 65.5% of the target, still need to be removed from load reduction by March 2026.
Smart meter roll-out is central to the programme. Eskom has installed 444 062 smart meters nationally, of which 171 507 have been deployed on load reduction feeders — about 30% of the end-state target of 577 347 meters on those feeders. Around 90% of the installations on load reduction feeders are concentrated in Gauteng, Mpumalanga, Limpopo and KwaZulu-Natal.
However, installation teams face persistent resistance, including intimidation and violent incidents, which have delayed approximately 122 000 planned meter conversions.
Free basic electricity beneficiaries have increased 20% from a baseline of 485 000 to an average of 582 110 this financial year, representing about 28% of the 2.1 million eligible customers. — (c) 2026 NewsCentral Media
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