Pretoria: Eskom reports that the power system continues to operate reliably, effectively meeting the winter electricity demand with ongoing resilience. “When occasional system constraints arise, they are effectively managed through the strategic deployment of emergency reserves during morning and evening peak periods,” the power utility stated on Friday.
According to South African Government News Agency, since 15 May 2025, there has been no loadshedding, with only 26 hours recorded between 1 April and 24 July 2025. With 37 days of Eskom’s Winter Outlook period still remaining, Eskom mentioned that the system remains well-positioned to maintain stability and meet demand effectively.
“As of today [Friday], unplanned outages are at 11,695MW, and the available generation capacity is 30,236MW. Tonight’s electricity demand is expected to reach 27,715MW. The current capacity is sufficient to meet both today’s demand and anticipated requirements over the weekend,” Eskom stated.
During the week of 18 to 24 July 2025, planned maintenance averaged 5,050MW. Over the same period, the Energy Availability Factor (EAF) ranged between 62% and 66%, with the month-to-date average further increasing to 63.11%, Eskom reported.
To further strengthen grid stability, Eskom plans to return a total of 3,960MW of generation capacity to service ahead of the evening peak on Monday, 28 July 2025, and throughout the coming week. Between 1 April and 24 July 2025, the Unplanned Capability Loss Factor (UCLF), which measures the percentage of generation capacity lost due to unplanned outages, decreased to 28.99%. This marks a reduction of approximately 0.5% compared to the previous week but remains about 2.4% higher than the 26.60% recorded during the same period last year.
“As of Thursday, the UCLF stood at 23.79%, consistently indicating a notable improvement in performance. The open-cycle gas turbine (OCGT) load factor decreased this week, reaching 1.86%, down from the 8.6% recorded during the previous week (11 to 17 July 2025). This indicates less reliance on OCGTs,” Eskom noted.
From 1 April to 24 July 2025, diesel spend remains within the budget allocated for 1 April to 31 July 2025. “The Winter Outlook, published on 5 May 2025, covering the period ending 31 August 2025, remains valid. It indicates that loadshedding will not be necessary if unplanned outages stay below 13,000MW. If outages rise to 15,000MW, loadshedding would be limited to a maximum of 21 days out of 153 days and restricted to Stage 2,” Eskom stated.
The power utility has encouraged all South Africans to use electricity efficiently throughout the winter season. To help manage household electricity consumption, Eskom customers are encouraged to use the Eskom Residential Calculator, a convenient tool for tracking and optimizing energy usage: https://www.eskom.co.za/distribution/residential-calculator/
Meanwhile, Eskom has corrected the diesel spend figure published in the Power Alert for the week ending 17 July 2025. “We identified a discrepancy in the reported diesel amount. The actual diesel spend should have been R5.554 billion, not R5.897 billion as stated. The figure 5,897 was in fact the R/MWh and was mistakenly captured as spend instead of R/MWh. This regretfully resulted in an inadvertent overstatement of the diesel spend, which we hereby correct. Eskom continuously reviews its diesel spend and energy output figures as part of its monthly reporting and reconciliation processes,” Eskom clarified.