Archive photo: Reint Dykema
South Africa has experienced no load shedding for 308 days in a row.
Eskom says that in the past financial year, from April 2025 to Thursday this week, only 26 hours of load shedding were recorded.
Average unplanned outages decreased by 17%.
The electricity availability factor remains consistently above 65%.
Between 1 April 2025 and 19 March 2026, Eskom generated 1 077.55 gigawatt-hours (GWh) from plants, at a diesel cost of R6.395 billion, significantly less than the 2 608.82 GWh generated in the same period last year (1 April 2024 to 19 March 2025) at a cost of R15.64 billion.
The power supplier says in a statement that the generation fleet continues to show sustained improvements and the network stability continues to strengthen. “This is made possible by the generation restoration plan which contributes to long-term energy security which helps to maintain an uninterrupted power supply.”
A significant improvement in unplanned interruptions was experienced.
For the financial year to date, R9.25 billion less was spent on diesel (for generation) than in the same period last year, which is a drop of 59.11% year on year.
Diesel consumption contributed 2.32 GWh to the network, at R13.19 million, resulting in a weekly load factor of 0.41%. The use of diesel this week was to meet reserve requirements.
Eskom says diesel expenses this year remain consistently below budget and are expected to remain below budget until the end of the financial year.