Eskom marks a full year without load shedding for the first time since 2018

South Africa's Eskom delivered electricity without any load shedding for a full 365 days as of 16 May 2026, the country's longest such stretch since September 2018 and a milestone the utility has framed as evidence of a genuine structural turnaround rather than a temporary lull. Eskom spokesperson Daphne Mokwena said the achievement "represents more than operational progress, it is a restoration of national confidence," while board chairperson Mteto Nyathi credited staff for rebuilding the utility after the state capture era that had crippled its generation fleet and finances.

Eskom said the improved reliability had saved an estimated R27 billion in diesel costs over the preceding three years, as the utility relied far less on its expensive open-cycle gas turbines to plug generation shortfalls, while still meeting 100% of national electricity demand.

What changed behind the scenes

The turnaround reflects sustained investment in maintaining Eskom's coal fleet, improved plant availability, and a growing contribution from independent power producers and mining companies' own wheeled renewable projects, which have taken pressure off the grid during peak periods. Eskom has characterised the shift as moving the power system "from recovery to a stable, high-performing" state, rather than simply a run of good luck with plant performance.

Why miners are still hedging

For energy-intensive industries such as mining, smelting and ferrochrome production, a stable grid removes one of the biggest operational risks of the past decade, when unplanned outages disrupted underground ventilation, processing plants and smelters. Even so, mining companies including Sibanye-Stillwater, Anglo American and Harmony Gold have continued expanding their own wheeled and embedded renewable generation rather than relying solely on Eskom's improved performance — a hedge that looks prudent given Eskom's own Medium-Term System Adequacy Outlook has warned that load shedding could return later in the decade as older coal units are decommissioned without enough new capacity built to replace them. For now, though, the 365-day milestone gives South African industry a rare stretch of policy and planning certainty around electricity supply, something mining investment decisions have lacked for most of the past fifteen years.

Sources

• EWN: South Africa marks exactly 365 days without loadshedding, 16 May 2026

Photo: An Eskom electricity substation in South Africa. Graeme Williams, Media Club, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0.