ENERGY
South Africa, whose organisation has argued for an independent operator against resistance from Eskom itself, maintains that an“ independent grid operator is the only way to build a truly competitive electricity market”. Without one, she says, Eskom controls both generation and the grid –“ the equivalent of letting one airline also control the airports”. Her organisation’ s reform tracker, as well as a progress update from Operation Vulindlela, both show that electricity reform is lagging behind schedule in several areas, and even reversed in some.
A market arriving late The wholesale electricity market, SAWEM, was due to open in April, but was then pushed into the third quarter. That deadline has slipped too. By late September, no new date had been announced for external trading. Competition may draw investment and push producers to run leaner, yet the system still carries the burden of transmission to be funded, municipal networks to be maintained, Eskom’ s debt, and customers who cannot afford more. More than 100 independent power producers are already connected and over 60 participants are wheeling electricity across the transmission network, so the order in which almost every major decision began and ended with one utility has already frayed.
According to a joint briefing by the electricity traders’ association, SAETA, and the research firm, Krutham, the first trades on the new market will be struck between two divisions of the same utility, with independent producers and everyone else invited in from 2027. �
How do others run the wires?
Britain took its grid operator out of the company that owns the wires. The operator had been legally separated from the National Grid ' s other businesses but still sat inside the group until 1 October 2024, when the government paid £ 630 million to bring it into public ownership as the National Energy System Operator( NESO). National Grid still owns the transmission lines in England and Wales.
Chile has an independent coordinator running a single national grid, and a rapid solar and wind build-out. The wires have lagged behind. In 2025, the country curtailed 6 084GWh of wind and solar, up 7.8 % on 2024, mostly in a sunlit north far from the demand in Santiago, and a 1 400km line meant to ease the jam is not expected to enter service until around 2030.
Texas has an independent operator too: ERCOT, running a grid largely cut off from the rest of the US. In February 2021 a winter storm froze gas supplies and power plants, and ERCOT ordered about 20 000MW of rolling blackouts, the largest manually controlled load-shedding event in US history. More than 4.5 million people lost power, some for as long as four days, and hundreds died.
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.”
42 sabusinessintegrator. co. za