{"id":652011,"date":"2026-06-05T15:06:17","date_gmt":"2026-06-05T13:06:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=652011"},"modified":"2026-06-05T15:10:52","modified_gmt":"2026-06-05T13:10:52","slug":"eskom-is-getting-replaced","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/energy\/652011-eskom-is-getting-replaced.html","title":{"rendered":"Eskom is getting replaced"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Eskom’s contribution to South Africa’s electricity supply is estimated to have dropped to roughly 81% last year. About a fifth of the country’s power comes from other sources, likely private generation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

South Africa lost its title as the continent’s top electricity producer in 2025, primarily due to a steep decline in coal-based power generation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Outlier recently analysed data<\/a> from energy intelligence firm Ember Energy, which showed that Egypt overtook South Africa as the continent’s largest electricity producer last year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the last decade, Egypt’s annual gross electricity generation grew by 35%, from 181.8 terawatt-hours (TWh) to 245.7TWh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the same period, South Africa’s gross electricity generation dropped 2.9% from 250.1TWh to 242.8TWh. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ember’s data showed that Egypt’s growth was driven almost entirely by fossil fuel\u2013based generation, mostly gas power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Renewables increased its share of the power mix from 8% to 12%, with the Aswan Dam carrying most of that load. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In contrast, South Africa’s fossil fuel-based electricity generation, which consists primarily of coal-fired power stations, plunged by 29.8TWh. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, significant uptake of renewables almost offset the decline. In 2025, renewable generation produced 33TWh of electricity, up 408% from 2015.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The contribution of renewables to Eskom’s electricity mix also increased from 2.6% to 13.6%. Renewable power has displaced coal, rather than meeting new demand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite the decline in coal-based generation, South Africa still relies more on it than almost any other country in the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Coal accounted for 81% of South Africa’s electricity generation, the most of any country except Mongolia, where coal contributed 86%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

South Africa also had the seventh-highest per capita coal generation of 3,050kWh per citizen. Almost all of the coal power capacity comes from Eskom. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It should be noted that Ember Energy’s data included gross energy generation across Eskom, municipalities, and private power producers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the 2.9% decline in gross generation is worrying, Eskom has even greater cause for concern, as its contribution to the energy mix has shrunk substantially.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Private power saves South Africa from major decline<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In 2015, the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research said that 95% of gross electricity generation came from Eskom. At that stage, its own gross generation was about 230TWh. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

By 2024, its contribution to the power mix had plummeted to 86%. In 2025, it sent out 190.81TWh of energy, which excludes the energy used by its own power stations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While Eskom has yet to disclose its gross generation for the year, the figure should be 195.5\u2013196.5TWh, based on internal power usage typically accounting for about 4.5% to 5% of total generation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Based on Ember’s estimated total of 242.8TWh across all energy sources, Eskom’s contribution to total generation should be around 80.6%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eskom’s gross generation has therefore dropped by about 35TWh, greater than the coal power reduction. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Therefore, the country used less Eskom-generated electricity from non-coal sources, and the increase in renewable power primarily came from private energy generators.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Therefore, Ember’s data showed that the decline in load-shedding could not be attributed solely to a reduction in energy demand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other electricity generators increased their share of the supply from about 5% to 19.4% in the last 10 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most municipalities do not have their own power generation, meaning most of the growth came from the private sector.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the last decade, the National Energy Regulator of South Africa (Nersa) has registered 19,300MW of private power generation, primarily solar and wind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition, an estimated 7,300MW of solar power has been installed in smaller “behind-the-meter” installations. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The surge was driven by businesses and households seeking alternatives to protect themselves from Eskom’s deteriorating coal fleet, which frequently plunged the country into load-shedding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While Eskom’s energy availability factor has improved by roughly 10 percentage points over the last two years, it is still well below the standards of leading power utilities worldwide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Without the contribution of private power, which took significant strain off the grid, the suspension of load-shedding would not have happened.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Recent data published by Ember Energy shows that Eskom’s contribution to South Africa’s electricity supply continues to shrink at a rapid pace. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341042,"featured_media":645430,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27995],"tags":[39258,173,181,70165,81416,57688,4922,100537],"class_list":["post-652011","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-energy","tag-coal-power","tag-egypt","tag-eskom","tag-private-power","tag-renewable-power","tag-renewables","tag-solar-power","tag-the-outlier"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652011"}],"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=652011"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652011\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":652192,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652011\/revisions\/652192"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/645430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=652011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=652011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=652011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}