{"id":607998,"date":"2025-08-22T19:17:39","date_gmt":"2025-08-22T17:17:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=607998"},"modified":"2025-08-22T19:25:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-22T17:25:10","slug":"eskom-breakdowns-milestone-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/energy\/607998-eskom-breakdowns-milestone-2.html","title":{"rendered":"Eskom breakdowns milestone"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Eskom announced that its unplanned outages dropped to their lowest level in nearly five years on Friday, with just 7,265MW of capacity offline due to breakdowns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The power utility said this is the first time that total unit breakdowns have been lower than 8,000MW since 11 December 2020.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eskom said the achievement highlighted structural progress in plant performance due to the ongoing implementation of its Generation Recovery Plan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Eskom’s sustained technical improvements have ensured a reliable power system, meeting more than 97% of electricity demand this winter and financial year to date,” Eskom said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“With just over a week remaining in Eskom’s Winter Outlook period, the power system remains well-positioned to maintain stability and reliably meet demand.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From the start of Eskom’s financial year on 1 April to 21 August 2025, the Unplanned Capability Loss Factor has decreased to 27.85%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“This represents a week-on-week improvement of approximately 0.29%, although it remains about 2.0% higher than the 25.81% recorded during the same period last year,” Eskom said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, unplanned outages over the past week averaged at 10,471MW, lower than the 10,733MW recorded during the same period last year. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eskom also ramped up planned maintenance slightly, with an average of 5,524MW offline for scheduled work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the year-to-date, planned maintenance has averaged 5,223MW, accounting for 11.12% of total generation capacity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“This reflects a slight increase from the previous week and a 0.8% rise compared to the same period last year,” Eskom said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Energy Availability Factor (EAF) fluctuated between 63% and 69%, with the month-to-date average rising to 64.98%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“These figures exclude Kusile Unit 6, which has been contributing 720MW to the national grid since 23 March 2025,” Eskom said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Although not yet in commercial operation, the unit is expected to reach that milestone by September 2025.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As of Friday evening, available generation capacity stood at 30,442MW, with electricity demand expected to reach 25,378MW.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The current capacity is sufficient to meet both today’s demand and anticipated requirements over the weekend.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall 2025 performance still worse than 2024<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Eskom has not implemented load-shedding since 15 May 2025. Since the start of its current financial year, there have been 26 hours of rotational power cuts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Due to improvements over the last week, the year-to-date EAF has increased further to 60.56%. However, at the same time last year, the figure stood at 63.35% <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eskom said the difference was mainly due to a 2% increase in unplanned maintenance compared to the previous year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eskom also used less diesel-powered open-cycle gas turbines (OCGT) generation during the last week, with the load factor decreasing from 1.21% between 8 and 14 August to 0.78% from 15 to 21 August 2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the year-to-date load factor for OCGTs has also decreased week-on-week by 0.4 percentage points to 8.53%, it remains higher than the 4.48% recorded during the same period last year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Over a period of approximately five months, from 1 April to 21 August 2025, Eskom spent R5.916 billion on fuel for its OCGT plants, generating 999.95GWh of electricity,” the power utility said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“This represents a significant increase compared to the 525.44GWh produced during the same period last year.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eskom stressed that its diesel spend remained within budget and that expenditure on the fuel was not uniform throughout the year, with seasonal changes based on demand and operational requirements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The power utility is planning to return 4,850MW of generation capacity to service ahead of the evening peak on Monday, 25 August 2025, and throughout the coming week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Winter Outlook \u2014 which indicates that load-shedding will not be necessary if unplanned outages stay below 13,000MW \u2014 remained valid.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eskom’s unit breakdowns have dropped below a level last seen in December 2020. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341042,"featured_media":527113,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27995],"tags":[181,101107,8487,100933,94281],"class_list":["post-607998","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-energy","tag-eskom","tag-generation-recovery-plan","tag-load-shedding","tag-unplanned-breakdowns","tag-unplanned-capacity-loss-factor-uclf"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/607998"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341042"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=607998"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/607998\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":608007,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/607998\/revisions\/608007"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/527113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=607998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=607998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=607998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}