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Eskom expected to implement stage 2 load shedding if it is warranted.
Picture: The Citizen / Michel Bega
Eskom said it will have more than 2.5GW of power this winter and could avoid load shedding altogether if unplanned breakdowns remain below 13GW.
This bodes good news for South Africans who were worried about rolling blackouts during winter.
The parastatal shared the company’s operational performance and winter outlook during the “State of System” media briefing on Monday.
The briefing comes after a challenging start to the year. In late January and February, South Africa experienced different levels of power cuts from stage 3 to stage 6, following nearly ten months of uninterrupted electricity supply.
Eskom chair Mteto Nyati said Eskom has used about R6 billion in diesel to keep the lights on.
“We have spent a lot of time as management to fix the problems.”
ALSO READ: Winter is coming: Does Eskom have a plan to prevent load shedding?
Minister of Electricity, Kgosientsho Ramokgopa, said there will be more available power this year to battle winter.
Ramokgopa said 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.
“We will have 2 500MW additional this winter compared to last year with Kobeberg, Medupi and Kusile coming online.”
Ramokgopa said Koerberg Unit 1 has received a long-term go-ahead from the operator for 20 more years.
“Kusile Unit 1 will go back to normal by the end of May; units 1 to 3 will give us what we need for the winter period.”
Ramokgopa said Eskom is also transitioning from “ending load shedding to “energy saving”.
“That’s very important, and that’s why when we have periodic episodes of load shedding, it’s a significant setback on our ambition to ensure that we are able to sustain that transition, and I’m confident with what Eskom is sharing with you.
“You will see that now we are getting to a point where we will be saying we are ending load shedding and we are transitioning into energy security,” Ramokgopa said.
Ramokgopa added that the energy transitions mean “we will not have something called load reduction”.
“We’ll occasion a different briefing where I’ll be sharing with the rest of the country on how we are going to end load reduction, working with municipalities and affected communities.
“We’ll be in every village, every township and every locality to engage with those communities. We have already mapped them. We know what the requirements are. We start to roll it out so that we address the issues around the inequities with regards to electricity access, because invariably, this issue of load reduction is concentrated in poor areas, in the rural villages and the hinterlands,” Ramokgopa said.
Last week, Ramokgopa forecast the country’s power plants to perform the same as last year, as he saw no reason for their performance to decrease, he said on the sidelines of the second G20 Energy Transitions Working Group in Cape Town on Wednesday.
Eskom CEO Dan Marokane said significant improvements have been made since the Summer 2024/25 outlook.
Marokane said Eskom does not expect load shedding this winter if unplanned outages remain below 13GW.
“If outages increase to 15GW, load shedding would be limited to a maximum of 21 days out of 153 days at Stage 2 – an improvement over the prior winter’s worst-case prediction of Stage 5 load shedding.”
Marokane said that load shedding was the lowest in Eskom’s last Financial Year (FY) 2025 than in the previous two years.
“Our diesel open cycle gas turbines were utilised approximately 50% less in FY 2025 compared to the two previous financial years, saving around R16 billion,” Marokane said.
Marokane said load reduction remains necessary to protect the network and people in areas with rampant illegal connections.
The utility has embarked on campaigns with law enforcement to remove the connections, with Gauteng seeing the highest implementation.
ALSO READ: We just came out of emergency load shedding, but Eskom has high hopes for winter
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