Eskom Expects Steady Improvement in 2025
Eskom’s predictions for 2025 may bring some much-needed relief to South Africans who have experienced the pain of load-shedding for the past few years. According to the utility, the likelihood of load-shedding returning in 2025 has greatly declined, and it is expected to be load-shedding-free.
‘Miracle’ Performance in 2024
South Africa experienced record levels of load-shedding in 2023, with almost 25,000 gigawatt hours shed over 287 days. Many expected this trend to continue at the start of 2024, but Eskom achieved what many considered a miracle – no load-shedding for the rest of the year.
One of the main reasons for the improvement is the higher electricity availability factor (EAF), which rose from just over 51% in January 2024 to over 63.6% in November 2024. The Reserve Bank explained that a key contributing factor to the increase in the EAF is reduced demand for Eskom-supplied electricity as alternative energy sources increase.
Eskom’s Performance Takes a Turn for the Better
The performance of Eskom’s own coal-fired power plants has also greatly improved in 2024 as the utility’s Generation Recovery Plan bears fruit. Eskom managed to completely turn its performance around, with the utility even producing too much power at some stages last year.
Anticipated Performance in 2025
Eskom told Daily Investor that the average unplanned unavailability for this summer is about 11,500 MW, which is about 1,500 MW lower than the base case assumption for the Summer Outlook shared in August 2024. At this level of unplanned unavailability, no load-shedding is anticipated.
However, Eskom also provided its worst-case scenario, with the heightened risk indicated on the longer-term outlook based on the Summer Outlook assumption for unplanned unavailability of 13,000 MW. Therefore, despite Eskom’s good performance over the last nine months, the utility’s 52-week outlook for 2025 still predicts a likely risk scenario where there will be a shortfall.
Eskom’s Plan for 2025
For 2025, Eskom plans to continue implementing generation recovery, strengthening governance, and tackling crime and corruption. The utility also aims to future-proof the organization to enable energy security, growth, and long-term sustainability to the benefit of South Africa and sub-Saharan Africa.
Eskom will pursue its strategy across a number of key initiatives to deliver value. These include:
– Increasing the EAF to 70% in the next 12 to 36 months.
– Returning more than 2.5 GW in capacity to the grid by March 2025 and developing an executable initial pipeline of at least 2 GW of clean energy projects by 2026.
– Re-baselining the cost trajectory and improving efficiencies.
– Advocating and pursuing a sustainable solution to municipality debt.
– Delivering the unbundling of the Distribution and Generation divisions.
– Accelerating the implementation of initiatives to enable a Just Energy Transition.
Chris Yelland’s Perspective
Chris Yelland from EE Business Intelligence told Daily Investor that, while you can never know for sure, the data shows that the probability of experiencing load-shedding in 2025 has reduced. Yelland warned that Eskom must continue to ‘do the right thing’ if it wishes to maintain the new status quo.
He said that Eskom is on the right track at the moment, with a good team in place and a significant improvement in generation performance. “The point is a country like South Africa should not experience load-shedding. It is completely abnormal,” he said.
