300 days of power: Eskom’s recovery sparks hope for economy

South Africa has gone 300 days without load shedding, dispelling the myth that it was a pre-2024 election ploy to win votes for the ruling party.

Monday, 20 January 2025, marked 300 consecutive days without load shedding. The relative absence of load shedding is positive for the economy, which should register a growth of 1.5 to 2% in 2025, up from less than 1% in 2024, according to the Minerals Council SA.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is forecasting growth of 1.5% in SA for 2025, rising to 1.6% in 2026. This is still well short of the average 4.2% expected growth in sub-Saharan Africa. However, it represents an improvement on the prior year as electricity reforms, lower inflation and interest rate cuts start to take effect.

“We are optimistic that electricity availability is no longer a binding constraint on mining activity,” says the Minerals Council SA in a statement.

“However, the affordability of electricity is now taking centre stage, affecting the competitiveness and profitability of the mining sector in South Africa.”

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Eskom has made a remarkable recovery. Not only has there been no load shedding since March 2024 – marking over nine months of uninterrupted supply – but the implementation of its generation recovery plan has significantly improved planned maintenance and the reliability of power plants.

Grid stability was bolstered by the return to service in December of Koeberg’s Unit 2, adding up to 930MW of power to the grid on some days with an energy availability factor (EAF) of 99.95%.

Kriel Power Station’s unit 6 in Mpumalanga is also back on track, adding 475MW of power to the grid after tripping in November 2024.

Eskom’s overall EAF in 2024 averaged 60.1%, a notable improvement from the 55% average in 2023.

However, the EAF slipped from 62% in November to 56.9% in December 2024, as Eskom used the holiday shutdowns to conduct additional planned maintenance ahead of the winter period commencing 1 April 2025. EAF picked up again in January 2025, running at nearly 62%, about 7 percentage points better than the same month a year ago.

The December maintenance blitz forced it to make additional use of its open-cycle gas turbines to secure grid stability.

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Eskom projects a potential shortage of around 2 000MW in dispatchable generation during the winter months, though this assumes a high level of unplanned outages and is therefore considered unlikely. While slim, the risk of load shedding during the winter months cannot be ruled out.

The improved performance at Eskom has resulted in year-to-date diesel savings of R16.42 billion (on a year-on-year basis), which is about 62.9% less than the R26.1 billion spent during the same period last year.

While load shedding is currently suspended, Eskom says it is dealing with network overloading issues in certain areas due to illegal connections, vandalism, meter tampering, unauthorised network operations, theft of network equipment, and purchasing electricity from unlicensed vendors.

This article was republished from Moneyweb. Read the original here.