State-owned energy utility Eskom has promised South Africans a stable electricity supply in the winter months to come.
Speaking at a media briefing at Megawatt Park on Monday, energy minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa said the interventions that have been implemented at Eskom have put the utility in a position where driving energy stability has taken priority.
“In as far as winter 2025 is concerned, assuming there are 13-15GW of unplanned outages, in terms of what see from the performance coming from the grid, we see no loadshedding for the winter period. In the case where unplanned outages reach the upper estimate of 15GW, then we predict no more than 21 days of up to stage-2 load shedding,” said Eskom CEO Dan Marokane.
According to Ramokgopa, grid stability has been bolstered by the return of a number of generation units, including units 1, 2 and 3 at Kusile, with unit 6 at Medupi expected to come back online by the end of May.
These units together will add just over 2.5GW to the grid, said Ramokgopa.
At last year’s pre-winter briefing, Eskom was working to getting regulatory approval to extend the life of unit 1 at the Koeberg nuclear plant near Cape Town. The approval, granted in July 2024, meant unit 1 would give another 20 years of generation capacity to the national grid. Unit 2 at Koeberg, which is “in the last stages” of maintenance operations, is also expected to come back online during the upcoming winter, too.
Weak points
Eskom chairman Mteto Nyati, who also spoke at Monday’s briefing, addressed recent bouts of load shedding that tarnished Eskom’s record of close to 300 days of stable electricity supply. He said disruptions, amounting to five bouts of load shedding in total, helped Eskom identify weak points in its operations.
Nyati explained that the root causes of recent power cuts were leadership failures and personnel not following standard operating procedures during maintenance. He said the organisation needs to do better at holding people accountable where it should and recognising good work where appropriate.
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“We had to look at this as a board and the executives to figure out what is going on, because this is not something we want to see within Eskom. It is really about learning. You always have challenges and you always have setbacks. I have been part of turnarounds in many different organisations and none of those has been a straight line. It’s not that we have issues around the equipment; it is largely people-related issues,” said Nyati.
Marokane said that despite recent bouts of load shedding, Eskom has improved generation capacity and grid stability over the two years that its maintenance plan has been in progress. Key highlights include 352 days free of load shedding, savings exceeding R16-billion resulting from reduced diesel spend and about 3.1GW of generation capacity added to the national grid. — (c) 2025 NewsCentral Media
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