{"id":625212,"date":"2026-01-15T12:02:18","date_gmt":"2026-01-15T10:02:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=625212"},"modified":"2026-01-15T15:05:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-15T13:05:07","slug":"eskom-is-being-replaced-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/energy\/625212-eskom-is-being-replaced-3.html","title":{"rendered":"Eskom is being replaced"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Eskom’s electricity sales are declining year-on-year as the private sector increases renewable power generation and more residents and businesses install rooftop solar systems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moreover, recent data on the registration of privately-operated electricity generation facilities suggests that Eskom’s sales will continue to decline.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The decline in Eskom’s electricity sales is evident in the state-owned power utility’s latest annual results, which show that electricity sales decreased by 3% year-on-year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This trend, which has been ongoing since the 2015\/16 fiscal year, is expected to continue as more renewable power projects come online.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eskom’s electricity sales peaked at nearly 220,000GWh in 2015\/16 and had declined to 183,300GWh by 2023\/24, representing a sales decline of around 37,000GWh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The frequent and intense load-shedding suffered in South Africa in 2022 and 2023 drove many of South Africa’s wealthier residents \u2014 and Eskom’s “good” customers \u2014 to install solar power systems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, the exodus wasn’t limited to residents, and many businesses also opted to go off-grid with solar power systems or by signing power purchase agreements with private players.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The shift was damaging for Eskom, as many of its customers who could reliably pay for their electricity have drastically reduced their reliance on the utility, or are no longer contributing to its revenue at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Impower energy expert Matthew Cruise, the declining sales in 2024 and 2025 are despite significant improvements in electricity availability at Eskom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Even if Eskom’s power stations were fully functional, it would still face declining energy use because customers are leaving the grid,” he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This presents a dangerous cycle for the power utility. Its costs have increased significantly in recent years, forcing it to raise prices to meet its operational costs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, increasing prices will likely drive more South Africans with the means to do so to go off-grid, further reducing its electricity sales and the number of customers who can reliably afford to pay for electricity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eskom general manager Eric Shunmugam recently revealed that the utility’s generation improvements meant it could focus on reducing costs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The chart below tracks installed rooftop solar capacity from December 2022 to December 2025, as per Eskom’s data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t<\/svg>\n\t\t<\/button><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

More bad news for Eskom<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Eskom’s electricity sales are expected to continue declining in the coming years as the registration of privately operated generation facilities accelerates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By December 2025, the capacity of private generation facilities registered by South Africa’s energy regulator had already reached an annual record, with still a quarter of the year remaining.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In November, the National Energy Regulator of South Africa (Nersa) said it registered another 181 facilities in the third quarter of 2025, with a total capacity of 1,401MW.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That brought the total number of generation facilities registered from January to September 2025 to 450, just 17 short of the whole of 2024, which was the highest annual number registered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Combined, the capacity of these facilities is 5,504MW \u2014 1,000MW greater than the previous full-year record of 4,490MW achieved in 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A significant portion of the new capacity registered in 2025 came in the form of four wind power plants that, once operational, will have a combined peak output of 750MW.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, most of the facilities registered will use solar power to generate electricity. In total, 175 solar power plants are in the pipeline with a combined capacity of 650MW.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nersa has registered 2,236 facilities with a combined capacity of 16,040MW since commencing with private power registrations in 2018.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The figure of 16,040MW is roughly equal to the amount of power that could be shed under stage 16 load-shedding, and about triple the capacity of one of Eskom’s newest power plants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The combined cost of all the private generation facilities is R327.69 billion, around R122 billion less than the estimated cost of Medupi and Kusile.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These controversial power plants can produce a combined peak capacity of 9,600MW, which is 38% less than the total registered private capacity since 2018.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moreover, the two plants took 18 years to become fully operational, while large private solar power plants typically take just two to three years to enter commercial operation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The table below summarises the number of generation facilities as well as their combined capacity and investment cost registered by Nersa in each year since 2018.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Year<\/th>Number of facilities<\/th>Capacity (MW)<\/th>Investment cost<\/th><\/tr><\/thead>
2018<\/td>52<\/td>26MW<\/td>R525 million<\/td><\/tr>
2019<\/td>41<\/td>23MW<\/td>R464 million<\/td><\/tr>
2020<\/td>124<\/td>53MW<\/td>R681 million<\/td><\/tr>
2021<\/td>282<\/td>134MW<\/td>R1.89 billion<\/td><\/tr>
2022<\/td>406<\/td>1,646MW<\/td>R25 billion<\/td><\/tr>
2023<\/td>405<\/td>4,490MW<\/td>R84.96 billion<\/td><\/tr>
2024<\/td>476<\/td>4,164MW<\/td>R89.54 billion<\/td><\/tr>
2025 YTD<\/td>450<\/td>5,504MW<\/td>R124.63 billion<\/td><\/tr>
Total<\/strong><\/td>2,236<\/strong><\/td>16,040MW<\/strong><\/td>R327.69 billion<\/strong><\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/div><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eskom’s sales are expected to continue to decline as residents and businesses take control of their own power supply.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341076,"featured_media":616924,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27995],"tags":[181,102880,24740,63036,102878,81103,102879],"class_list":["post-625212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-energy","tag-eskom","tag-eskom-electricity-sales","tag-national-energy-regulator-of-south-africa-nersa","tag-private-power-generation","tag-private-power-plants","tag-rooftop-solar","tag-rooftop-solar-pv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/625212"}],"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\/341076"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=625212"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/625212\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":625300,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/625212\/revisions\/625300"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/616924"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=625212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=625212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=625212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}