Electricity and Energy Minister, Kgosientsho Ramokgopa, said at his first 2025 Energy Action Plan media briefing on 31 January that the breakdown of six units meant a return to load shedding on Friday evening after more than 300 days without load shedding.

“This is a temporary setback and I am sure that we can announce the end of load shedding at the end of March once we add 2 500 Megawatts (MW) to capacity,” he said.

The aim of achieving an Energy Availability Factor (EAF) of 70% by March 2025 was still on track and would be helped as 2 524 MW capacity would be added in the first quarter 2025 consisting of 930 MW from Koeberg unit 2 in January, 800 MW from Kusile unit 6 in February and 794 MW from Medupi unit 4 in March.

The briefing was called at short notice on Friday and Ramokgopa thanked the media for being able to attend and inform the public.

“I want to issue a profuse apology for the return of load shedding, but we are within touching distance of calling an end to load shedding. I want to thank the 40 000 Eskom employees who have laboured long and hard to achieve more than 300 days of no load shedding,” he said.

“As we add more generation capacity from the private sector, so we will ensure energy security, so we will create the head space to absorb shocks like we are experiencing today,” he added.

Eskom CEO Dan Marokane said six units had suffered breakdowns due to boiler tube leaks. One unit has already been returned to service and a further three should be available over the weekend, so the load shedding should not last into next week, but Eskom would keep the public informed if there was any change to the schedule.

The Cape Town municipality has responded to the temporary setback by activating its 180 MW Steenbras pumped storage scheme that should help to prevent two stages of load shedding until 22h00 on Friday with more protection planned for the weekend.

“Throughout the weekend, we will protect the city from at least one and sometimes two stages of load-shedding. Please monitor City social media and web platforms for updates if Eskom's load-shedding persists,” Cape Town municipality said.

In the week ended 26 January, Eskom’s EAF averaged 58.63% with 25.53% of capacity unavailable due to unplanned breakdowns and 15.19% out due to planned maintenance. Eskom’s operating reserve varied from 14.8% to 20.8% during the week.

Despite this reserve, the unplanned breakdown meant that Eskom had to use expensive diesel fuelled Open Cycle Gas Turbine (OCGT) to keep the lights on, but the need to replenish diesel as well as water for the upper dams at the pumped storage schemes meant that Eskom had to reluctantly announce the return of load shedding. It also underlines why the electricity industry say that a minimum of 15% operating reserve should be the benchmark.

"We've exhausted our reserves. We are at a point where, for purposes of protecting the grid and the integrity of the system, we need to maintain the reserve margin,” Marokane added.

Segomoco Scheppers, the interim CEO of the National Transmission Company South Africa (NTCSA), updated the media on the targets that the NTCSA has set.

“Our target for this financial year is to add 300 kilometers (km) to the grid. As at the end of December we have built 250 km, so we are on track to meet our target. In a similar manner, our target for transformers was adding 2 500 megavolt-amperes (MVA). At the end of December, 1 000 MVA has been installed, while the remainder of transformers are in the country and waiting to be installed by the end of March,” he said.

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