Eskom of South Africa anticipates no power outages this summer
Eskom, the state utility of South Africa, stated on Friday that, unless there is an increase in facility failures, it does not anticipate any power outages over the summer months in the southern hemisphere.
For over ten years, Eskom’s challenges in providing electricity to the largest economy in Africa have slowed economic growth. However, in summer, outages decreased from 176 days the previous year to 13 days due to improvements in power plant performance.
At a press conference discussing the electrical prognosis for the months of September 2025 to March 2026, which is roughly similar to South Africa’s summer, company executives stated that more advancements gave them confidence in their ability to produce power continuously in the months to come.
“We have some headroom going into this summer, which should allow us to perform our maintenance. Dan Marokane, the CEO, stated, “We didn’t have this last year.”
“It is this reason that we foresee no loadshedding (power cuts) for the cases where unplanned losses remain below 15,000 megawatts (MW).”
Eskom reported that in August, unscheduled electricity losses decreased to about 10,000 MW, far lower than in previous years when South Africans were accustomed to almost daily power outages.
The company operates a nuclear power plant and a few smaller units that burn diesel or use water to generate electricity. Its plants have a nominal capacity of approximately 46,000 MW and are primarily coal-fired.
