• Eskom is celebrating 300 days with no loadshedding for the first time since 2018.
• The company has now appointed an executives to handle its renewables projects.
• Eskom is still bleeding money, with a recent yearly loss of R55 billion.

As of 21st January 2025, it has been 300 days since the last bout of loadshedding in South Africa, according to the country’s power utility Eskom. It is the first time since 2018 that the country has been free of rotational nationwide blackouts.

Eskom says adherence to the energy action plan implemented by the government in 2022 in the midst of the energy crisis and during the tenure of then CEO Andre de Ruyter is to thank for the “vast improvement” seen at the utility.

At one point, many energy experts believed and publicly stated, including De Ruyter himself, that Eskom would never be able to stop loadshedding.

As we head into the summer period of 2025, Eskom says that South Africans can expected a loadshedding free summer. It said it is “predicting a likely scenario of a load shedding free summer due to structural generation improvements. This outlook remains unchanged.”

“In the last ten months, we have focused on strengthening our executive team not only to bring in specialist skills to drive the delivery of our strategy in a fast-moving and increasingly competitive marketplace, but to also drive interventions to address the legacy management control issues that have characterised our recent audit findings,” explained CEO Dan Marokane.

Despite managing to keep loadshedding at bay for 300 days, the utility is still hesitant to state that loadshedding will never return. As as business Eskom is still drudging through a huge, seemingly bottomless loss.

In 2024, it announced an eye-watering R55 billion loss across its business group, with a large portion of the loss attributed to non-payment of power bills from municipalities across the country.

The utility claims, per state news, it is making incremental changes to its losses, and in 2024 announced that it had managed to save R16.42 billion from not using as much diesel to power its expensive open-cycle gas turbines (OCGTs).

These OCGTs were used significantly during the height of the energy crisis to keep the power grid from collapsing.

“I believe that we have reached a turning point and that the 2024 financial year will be remembered as the year in which we laid the foundation for future success,” said Calib Cassim, Group Chief Financial Officer of Eskom said in late 2024.

As loadshedding eases, Eskom looks to renewables

Now the company has appointed a new Group Executive for Renewables as it looks towards the future and the rest of the energy action plan of 2022, which calls for investment in renewable fonts of energy.

It has appointed Rivoningo Mnisi to head its renewables. A former mining executive, Mnisi previously worked as the chief strategy officer for Exxaro Resources.

“[Mnisi’s] focus will be on delivering an Eskom renewable energy business that will become a significant player in this segment, focussing on work already in progress for an executable initial pipeline of at least 2GW of clean energy projects by 2026,” the utility said in a statement.

“He will also lead the advancement of Eskom’s pipeline of more than 20GW of clean energy projects to diversify its energy mix as part of the emissions reduction strategy.”

[Image – Photo by Matthew Henry on Unsplash]