Winter is coming: Does Eskom have a plan to prevent load shedding?

With winter arriving in South Africa in June, many will be wondering if Eskom is prepared to cope with the cold, harsh weather that puts additional pressure on the electricity grid, leading to load shedding.

Winter is expected to arrive on 21 June and make its exit around 22 September.

Winter outlook

As the country prepares for colder weather, Eskom said it will provide a “State of the System and Winter Outlook” on Monday.

Earlier this week, Minister of Electricity, Kgosientsho Ramokgopa, predicted a load-shedding-free winter for this year.

The minister 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.

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Ramokgopa expressed confidence that generation levels would match or exceed those of winter 2024, with no expected setbacks.

Load shedding

In January, Eskom shattered its record of 300 days of no load shedding when it imposed stage 3 power cuts after more than 10 months of uninterrupted electricity supply.

Since January, there has been infrequent load shedding, and the country hit stage 6 power cuts in February.

Ramokgopa at the time said the country had been hit by a “perfect storm”.

Stage 6

Eskom CEO Dan Marokane also dismissed claims that the utility implemented stage 6 load shedding because it failed to get the requested electricity tariff hike from the National Energy Regulator of South Africa (Nersa).

In August, the parastatal submitted an application to Nersa for a proposed 36.15% hike during its 2026 financial year, 11.81% in 2027 and 9.10% in 2028.

However, in January, Nersa only approved a 12.7% electricity tariff increase for Eskom.

Marokane said stage 6 load shedding has nothing to do with the parastatal’s failure to receive its desired electricity tariff hike.

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