ENERGY
For years, the country‘ s electricity could be told through a schedule, a grid of stages, and two-hour windows that decided when a factory ran, a till worked and a household ate. In Eskom ' s 2024 financial year, rolling blackouts hit a total of 329 days. In the year leading up to March 2026, they hit on four, and there’ ve been none since May 2025, through a winter that Eskom had forecast would pass without load shedding – and it did. by March 2026 and now stands at R120.26 billion, while Eskom says it could reach R358 billion by 2031 without decisive intervention. Outgoing CFO Calib Cassim says Eskom would have earned about R15 billion more had it been paid what it was owed, because revenue from non-paying municipalities is only booked when the cash arrives.
The plants have earned it. Eskom’ s energy availability factor stands at 67.96 % for the financial year to 17 September, its best in six years, about 6 202MW of capacity has come back onto the grid compared to three years ago, and the diesel bill for the open-cycle gas turbines has fallen from R5.93 billion to R1.13 billion against the same stretch last year. Load reduction, the quieter cousin of load shedding, still lingers in parts of the network, though; seven provinces are clear of it, and Eskom wants it gone by March 2027.
On the day Eskom released its results, President Cyril Ramaphosa wrote:“ Overcoming load shedding was never the end of our work. Our task, therefore, is not simply to produce enough electricity. We need electricity that is reliable, affordable, and increasingly clean.”
What the light costs Eskom made R30.3 billion after tax in the year to March 2026, more than double 2025‘ s R14 billion, while selling 6.2 % less electricity. The extra money came from a tariff increase averaging 12.7 %, from R10.6 billion less spent on running the gas turbines, and from a fleet that broke down less. The increases businesses are budgeting against now may be smaller – 8.76 % for Eskom’ s direct customers from April and 9.01 % for municipal customers from July – but they arrive on top of the last one.
The customers who can leave, are leaving. Large industrial users are generating their own power or signing private supply agreements, and in Mozambique, the Mozal aluminium smelter has gone into care and maintenance( the industry’ s soft phrase for a plant switched off) after failing to agree on a tariff with Eskom. This means that Eskom still has to keep a national system standing, and pay for its expansion, out of fixed costs spread across fewer units sold.
The bigger hole sits at the municipal end of the wire. Municipal debt to Eskom rose 17.9 % to R111.6 billion
" This means that Eskom still has to keep a national system standing, and pay for its expansion, out of fixed costs spread across fewer units sold."
“ Eskom can be in a position to execute the capital requirements without the need for government support, but you have to solve the municipal debt," he stated, just as the country is gearing up for municipal elections, scheduled for 4 November 2026.
For businesses looking beyond Eskom for cheaper or cleaner power, however, the grid itself is a constraint.
Wind with nowhere to go Much of the country’ s best wind and sun sits in the Northern, Western and Eastern Cape where the wires are thin, and a renewable plant can be viable, financed and ready to build but still unable to get a connection to the grid. The National Transmission Company’ s 2024 plan expects about 56GW of new generation to be plugged in between 2025 and 2034, which needs 14 500km of new lines and 210 transformers. Spread evenly, that is roughly 1 450km of line per year, and in Eskom’ s latest financial year, 270.8km of high-voltage line and 4 000MVA of transformer capacity were added. Government is turning to independent transmission projects and private finance to close the gap.
Behind the build sits a plan to take the wires out of Eskom’ s hands and pass it on to a state-owned transmission system operator that would run the grid and the market without favouring any producer. President Ramaphosa endorsed the restructuring task team’ s first report on it at the end of July.
Busi Mavuso, chief executive of Business Leadership
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