Energy | Eskom's spectacular turnaround: Hartmut Winkler weighs in

South Africa has seen 150 days without load shedding as Eskom continues to strengthen the grid to keep the lights on. The power utility has managed to maintain a constant electricity supply throughout the winter period with no load shedding since the start of the current financial year in April. The improvement has been attributed partly to the Generation Operational Recovery Plan aimed to boost the energy availability factor.

[htbeartom]

From Eldorado-Park - Were still having electricity outages daily, so where is the improvement ?

[nokotried]

Most of the townships and rurals are still experiencing "loadshedding" in a form of load-reduction.

[tinyikomaluleka]

Let us give credit where credit is due. The team at Eskom have done a remarkable job. Salute!!

[Zee-po]

Do they expect us to club hands for solving the problem they caused and why are we supposed to pay the reficulous price hikes? This needs proper investigation.

[MoeketsiMoseme]

Congratulations Eskom and you deserve credit for this big turnaround we know it's your job to keep the lights on but nonetheless you restored some kind of stability

[c.a.m.]

Do the deserve celebration? maybe it's because you haven't experience what we are going through. . They say it's load reduction. We out of electricity for 6-7 hr for 2 days in a week. 😢

[laurenruiz]

Before ANC took over this wouldn’t never have been newsworthy it was a given, ridiculous celebrating normality

[Cosmic_Hobo]

Now that eskom has been split and privatized, there's no longer incentive to do rolling blackouts.

[dienar]

Success built on death of industry and rising unemployment.

No success at all, improvement is mainly due to maintenance planned by De Ruiter and his team.

[jacquesmarais]

Why are you lying??? Load reduction 2 x per week fot 6 hours.

[wristcandy]

Were using less due to the high rates for electricity

[theolebattie]

The minister of Electricity has my vote for president of SA its a remarkable turnaround.
Well done minister and his team.

[johannmatthews]

There still is no turn around in the excessive prices!

In 1999/2000 a new vending system in Khayelitsha highlighted where the 65/ financial loss where hoing!
The money, cash, stolen by vendors and vendor controllers.

The system collected an additional R1.6 million PER Month at a tariyrate of R0.33 across 42000 meters/customers. The customer base was then 1% of Eskom prepaid base.

Politicians attributed the loss to poor people stealing electricity, while it issue was that poor people paid for electricity and the vendors stole the cash!

[johannmatthews]

How much electricity is going in homes and businesses...
How much cash is collected from the sales...

Do these numbers match up?


In 1999 Eskom was losing R200 million in cash collection, even though the customer got their electricity token. Where did the cash go? The cash was stolen by vendors and vendor controllers.