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South Africa's Eskom does not expect any power outages over the summer

Eskom, the South African utility company, said it would not expect any power outages during the summer months in southern hemisphere, barring an increase in breakdowns.

Eskom's problems supplying electricity to Africa’s largest economy have slowed economic growth by more than 10 years. But a change in performance at the power plants has reduced outages from 176 to 13 days during last summer, down from 176 the previous year.

At a press event on the electricity outlook between September 2025 to March 2026 (roughly equivalent to the summer in South Africa), company executives stated that they were confident of providing uninterrupted power supply for the months ahead.

We are going into this summer with some room to spare, which should allow us to perform our maintenance. "We didn't have it last year," said Chief Executive Officer Dan Marokane.

It is for this reason that there will be no loadshedding (power cut) in cases where the unplanned losses are below 15 megawatts.

Eskom reported that unplanned losses of electricity dropped to around 10,000 MW in august, well below the levels seen in previous years when South Africans were used to power outages on a daily basis.

The utility operates plants with a nominal power of 46,000 MW. It is mainly coal-fired but also has a nuclear station, and smaller plants that use diesel or water to produce electricity.

(source: Reuters)