No load shedding this winter, hopes Eskom

Eskom is planning to avoid load shedding during the winter period, as it says, its operational performance has improved and it expects additional capacity to come online.

The embattled parastatal briefed the media on Monday regarding its Winter Outlook for 2025.

“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,” said Dan Marokane, Eskom Group CEO.

PICTURE: Pixabay

He said the improved winter outlook is due to a 3.1GW decrease in unplanned outages compared to the previous year.  As a result, the forecast range has been lowered to 13-15GW, down from 14 -17GW in winter 2024.

Last winter, Eskom did not implement any load shedding, with average unplanned outages at 12.3GW - significantly below the winter 2024 base-case projection of 14GW.

“This year’s winter outlook prediction is built on an improvement in operational performance and overall efficiency. Load shedding was the lowest in Eskom’s last financial year (FY) 2025 than in the previous two years.

“In FY 2025, we delivered power 96% of the time. In the previous year, the figure was just 9.9%. Our diesel open cycle gas turbines (OCGTs) were utilised approximately 50% less in FY 2025 compared to the two previous financial years, saving around R16 billion,” added Marokane.

Minister of Electricity and Energy, Dr Kgosientsho Ramokgopa, said Koeberg unit 1 has received the long-term operating go-ahead from the regulator to ensure 20 years of additional life.

“We have been able to restore Kusile unit 2 and 3. Kusile unit 1 will be placed back in its original form before the end of May. The three units at Kusile will give us [additional] megawatts (MW) during the winter period.

“Kusile unit 6 has been synchronised to the grid. It is yet to be in commercial operation. It is a technical issue. It is [providing electricity] and at times, it must be taken out to be fixed. Once it gets into commercial operation, we will get the long-term benefits of the unit. We plan to bring back Medupi unit 4 back to service during winter. It has been out of service for about four years. We are expecting to get about 800MW in the middle of winter.’’

The Minister said load reduction will remain in place to protect the equipment and as a safety precaution to protect the lives of those who are close to the infrastructure when it gets overloaded due to rampant illegal connections.

From 1 April 2024 - 31 March 2025, Eskom implemented load shedding for 13 days compared to 329 and 208 in the two previous years, respectively.

 

Done by: Mitchum George