Overview
- South Africa heads into April–August with Eskom, following Wednesday's winter outlook, forecasting no national outages, a roughly 6GW peak surplus, and cover even if breakdowns rise to 14GW.
- Eskom cut unplanned breakdowns by about 5.2GW and lifted its energy availability to roughly 65%, which helped save R26.9 billion in diesel and keep supply at 98.9% last year.
- Electricity and Energy Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa said a national pricing policy will go to Cabinet within weeks to curb bill shock after an 8.76% April hike for Eskom customers and a municipal increase of just over 9% in July.
- Local load reduction — feeder-level cuts caused by overloaded lines and illegal connections — still affects about 1.69 million customers, with seven provinces targeted for clearance by October, more than 600,000 smart meters planned, and 67,578 new household connections in the past year.
- Eskom warned that supply could tighten in 2029–2030 unless about 10.3GW of solar, 7.4GW of wind, 3.7GW of storage and 6GW of gas are built, noting that only about half of awarded renewable projects since 2019 are complete.