South Africa’s state-owned utility Eskom said on Friday it does not expect power cuts during the upcoming southern hemisphere summer, unless equipment breakdowns increase significantly.
Persistent electricity shortages have constrained economic growth in Africa’s most industrialized economy for more than a decade, but a turnaround in plant performance saw outages fall to just 13 days last summer compared with 176 the year before, according to Reuters.
Company executives, speaking at a press conference on the electricity outlook for the period between September 2025 and March 2026, said further improvements have positioned the utility to maintain steady supply.
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“We are entering this summer with some headroom that should enable us to do our maintenance. We didn’t have this last year,” Chief Executive Officer Dan Marokane said.
“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 unplanned electricity losses dropped to about 10,000 MW in August, well below levels seen in recent years when South Africans endured near-daily outages.
The company operates power plants with a nominal capacity of roughly 46,000 MW, the majority coal-fired, alongside a nuclear station and smaller diesel- and water-powered facilities.
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Image Credit: Premium Times Nigeria
