Power utility Eskom is looking to add more renewable energy to the national grid, as the state-owned company looks to ensure energy security in South Africa.
This emerged when Eskom yesterday announced its latest power system update and winter 2025 outlook, confirming its “power system is in a further improved and more reliable position than in recent years”.
It has struggled with persistent load-shedding for over a decade, as aging infrastructure, underinvestment in maintenance and operational inefficiencies have severely constrained its ability to meet electricity demand.
In a statement, Eskom says it is focusing on evolving its business to position it for the energy transition and increasing competition, while ensuring energy security.
Among the key interventions, the company says it is implementing around 5.9GW of clean energy projects by 2030.
The other focus areas include legally separating its distribution and generation divisions, enhancing distribution and generation products and service offerings, as well as exploring strategic partnerships for funding and execution.
As it forges ahead with renewable energy initiatives, Eskom recently issued a tender invitation for firms with a proven track record in establishing clean energy businesses to assist it in accelerating the deployment of renewable energy solutions.
This, as South African businesses and households increasingly turn to renewable energy sources as they look to secure their energy supply, reduce costs and contribute to environmental sustainability.
Load-shedding outlook
The utility notes that for winter 2025, load-shedding is not expected if unplanned outages remain below 13GW.
It adds that if outages increase to 15GW, load-shedding would be limited to a maximum of 21 days out of 153 days at stage two – an improvement over the prior winter’s worst-case prediction of stage five load-shedding.
According to the state-owned company, this improved winter outlook is due to a 3.1GW decrease in unplanned outages compared to the previous year.
As a result, it notes, the forecast range has been lowered to 13GW −15GW, down from 14GW − 17GW in winter 2024.
Last winter had no load-shedding, with average unplanned outages at 12.3GW — significantly below the winter 2024 base-case projection of 14GW, the company adds.
“This year’s winter outlook prediction is built on an improvement in operational performance and overall efficiency,” says Dan Marokane, Eskom group chief executive.
“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 were utilised approximately 50% less in FY2025 compared to the two previous financial years, saving around R16 billion.
“Against this progress, we have seen some setbacks in operational excellence, as evidenced by the recent load-shedding requirements between January to April 2025. A targeted plan has been put in place to reinforce operational discipline and accelerate recovery initiatives to address the root causes related to the recent load-shedding events,” continues Marokane.
Eskom adds that a total of 3.470GW wind capacity was made available through curtailment in the Eastern and Western Cape.
In line with the goal to modernise the power system, Eskom has installed 880 000 smart meters, to date.
Among other benefits, this technology supports effective demand control through load limiting and enables eligible customers to return surplus clean energy to the grid, helping to reduce strain on the system during peak times, says the firm.
‘Bold decisions’ pay off
“Eskom produced in FY2025 more energy than in the previous two years and we continue to make bold decisions with the future in mind – to build a stronger, more reliable power system for the country,” says Bheki Nxumalo, Eskom group executive for generation.
“We have continued to maintain high levels of planned maintenance as part of efforts to improve fleet reliability in preparation for the high winter demand, while also meeting environmental licence conditions and regulatory requirements.
“We have evolved our Generation Recovery Plan to ensure our data-led analysis into the delays in returning units from outages on time, which has caused our fleet to be constrained and not able to accommodate a sudden loss of units, receives intense management focus as we use our high challenge, high support culture to support our teams to rectify this situation.”
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