Top South African mobile network not taking any chances with Eskom
MTN South Africa told MyBroadband that backup power systems remained critical to its operations, despite the end of load shedding.
In recent feedback, the mobile network operator elaborated on the role of its solar, battery, and generator solutions at many of its towers, also known as base stations.
These systems ensured network resilience, maintained service availability, and reduced reliance on the national grid during periods of instability, which remained critical to maintaining continuous service.
“While load-shedding has eased over the past year, grid instability, intermittent outages, severe weather events, and infrastructure challenges continue to impact power availability in many areas,” MTN said.
“As a result, these energy solutions remain critical and are actively utilised on a daily basis to support the network and ensure continuity of service.”
MTN said the energy generated from its solar systems was largely consumed internally at MTN sites and not fed back into the grid.
“Batteries are used to support hybrid operation during outages, helping to reduce generator run time, fuel consumption, and operating costs,” MTN said.
“Generators continue to play an important role where outages are prolonged, or infrastructure is damaged.”
The network operator confirmed that it doesn’t materially feed excess energy into the national grid and doesn’t receive credits for exporting power.
“The current focus is on optimising on-site consumption and improving efficiency across the network,” MTN said.
“Looking ahead, MTN is exploring scalable solutions such as virtual wheeling with independent power producers, which could enable broader optimisation of renewable energy usage.”
MTN added that these investments continued to support its core objective of providing a reliable, resilient network for consumers, while improving cost efficiency and reducing environmental impact.
While Eskom’s generating fleet reliability has improved over the last two years, its tariffs have continued to increase above inflation, pushing businesses towards adopting and scaling self-generation.
Demand reduction equivalent to four stages of load-shedding
South Africa reached 365 days without load-shedding on 16 May 2026, the longest reprieve in the power cuts since 2018.
Eskom said the milestone marked a decisive turning point and a structural shift from a recovering grid to a stable, high-performing power system.
“This moment has been three years in the making since the inception of the generation recovery plan,” Eskom board chair Mteto Nyati said.
“Eskom’s employees have again delivered using their deep technical and institutional capacity built over decades of public investment that remains a critical part of our national capacity.”
Eskom’s claim that the reduction in load-shedding was due to its generation recovery plan is highly contested.
Electricity demand on Eskom’s grid has been significantly reduced thanks to the proliferation of private power generation.
Although Eskom’s average Energy Availability Factor (EAF) has improved by about 10 percentage points since 2023, the figure is still far below its historical annual average.
At roughly 65% for the year ending March 2026, the EAF was at a similar level to 2020, when Eskom implemented 859 hours of load shedding, cutting 1,798 gigawatt-hours of demand from the grid.
In the 2026 year-to-date, Eskom’s average hourly electricity demand has been about 4,000MW lower than it was five years ago.
Two factors drove this drop. Many industrial facilities, including smelters and factories, were forced to close due to unsustainable operating costs, which included high electricity prices.
At the same time, adoption of privately generated electricity, primarily from solar power, has surged in the last few years.
Between 2018 and the first quarter of 2026, the National Energy Regulator of South Africa (NERSA) registered over 19,300MW of large-scale private electricity generation.
Eskom added less than half of that capacity over the same period, with the completion of the coal-fired Medupi and Kusile power plants. These had been under construction for nearly two decades.
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