Eskom revealed that failing to address current infrastructure challenges could result in costs of R600 billion over the next 20 years.
Eskom revealed to parliament that 95% of load reduction incidents are concentrated in just four provinces.
This comes as the utility tackles infrastructure overload and electricity theft that could cost the country R600 billion over two decades if left unaddressed.
The state power utility recently briefed parliament’s portfolio committee on Electricity and Energy about its controversial load reduction programme, which has drawn fierce criticism from communities experiencing prolonged power outages.
Load reduction provincial concentration and scale
Collin Reddy, Eskom’s general manager, explained that the utility’s submission focused specifically on its area of supply, which excludes municipalities.
He confirmed that load reduction is heavily concentrated in Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal, Limpopo and Mpumalanga.
Gauteng leads with 38% of load reduction incidents, followed by Limpopo at 21%, Mpumalanga at 20%, and KwaZulu-Natal at 18%.
The remaining provinces account for negligible percentages of between 1% and 2%.
Dr Kubeshnie Bhugwandin, from Eskom, emphasised that load reduction is “a last resort measure to protect the network equipment like transformers and cables as well as human life.”
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The scale of the problem
Reddy revealed that over a one-year period, the utility recorded 771 transformer failures. To prevent further failures, Eskom implemented load reduction across 971 feeders nationwide, impacting 1.6 million customers.
“Load reduction is necessary when we have a specific feeder or transformer that becomes overloaded due to illegal bypasses, metering, tampering, theft or vandalism,” Reddy explained.
The presentation revealed that 90% of the 1.6 million affected customers from Eskom’s 7.2 million customer base are on prepaid systems.
Reddy acknowledged this dispersion “might be reflecting as some sort of discrimination” but insisted it “is really a reflection of that dispersion within the country.”
The cost of inaction
Ready outlined the staggering financial implications of failing to address the load reduction crisis.
Eskom revealed that failing to address current infrastructure challenges could result in costs of R600 billion over the next 20 years.
The utility is losing 14.7 terawatt hours annually to theft and illegal connections, up from 13.5 terawatt hours in the 2024 financial year.
“When we look at a revenue perspective, that equates to over R30 billion in terms of revenue loss to Eskom,” Reddy said.
“The cost of producing that is slightly different to the revenue loss itself. So the cost would be around R7 billion to R8 billion versus the revenue loss.”
He warned that inaction would result in escalating costs. “The aspect of not doing anything is going to result in us increasing the cost of non-technical losses, increasing the wastage in terms of where generation produces this energy but it is not paid for,” Reddy cautioned.
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Plans to avert costly crisis
Reddy outlined targets for reducing energy losses through the smart meter rollout.
“Our proposal in terms of having a full system is that we are looking at having at least a 5% improvement as we start to roll out these [smart meters] on a year-to-year basis,” he said.
The utility expects more substantial gains once the meter data management system is fully operational.
The business case evaluated scenarios over a 20-year period, aligning with the expected lifecycle of smart meters that form the cornerstone of Eskom’s solution to load reduction.
The Eskom board has already approved R5.7 billion for the first five years of a smart meter rollout programme.
The utility plans to install 6.2 million smart meters by 2029 as part of its digital transformation and network improvement strategy.
Load reduction versus load shedding
Reddy was emphatic in distinguishing load reduction from national load shedding, presenting data from 24 September to illustrate the point.
At that time, demand stood at just over 20 000 gigawatt hours while generation capacity reached approximately 28 gigawatt hours, leaving a surplus of more than 8 000 gigawatt hours.
“Therefore we indicate that load reduction is not necessarily a load shedding in disguise but it is really a localised issue in terms of where there are issues around the particular feeders,” Reddy said.
He explained that while surplus capacity fluctuates throughout the day based on demand patterns, the utility maintains adequate national generation.
Three-phase elimination strategy
Eskom’s plan to eliminate load reduction by March 2027 follows a phased approach. By March 2026, the utility aims to address 577 000 of the 1.69 million affected customers.
An additional 560 000 customers would be addressed by September 2026, taking the total past 1.1 million.
The final phase by March 2027 would eliminate load reduction for all remaining customers.
Reddy presented detailed provincial breakdowns showing provinces with less than 2% of load reduction cases would reach zero by March 2026, leaving the focus on the four major provinces.
Using Limpopo as an example, Reddy illustrated the phased reduction: “By March 2026 we would move from 21% to 13% of customers that are impacted by load reduction. Then by September 2026, Limpopo would move from the 13% to 7% and then by March 2027 to 0%.”
The plan includes granular detail down to individual feeders. For the Mtubatuba network in KwaZulu-Natal, Reddy explained that 2 161 prepaid customers on the 22kV network breaker would see load reduction addressed starting in October, with completion by March 2026.
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