Load-shedding crunch near

South Africa is entering a critical winter period, and according to the utility’s latest 52-week outlook, Eskom load-shedding is most likely to occur in the next few weeks.

In its generation adequacy report for the week ended 1 June 2025, Eskom’s 52-week outlook shows that it will likely be more than 2,001MW short to meet demand and reserves from 16 June to 20 July.

Eskom uses the following colour-coding to indicate the expected severity of its capacity shortfalls:

• Green — Sufficient capacity to meet demand
• Yellow — Less than 1,000MW capacity short to meet demand
• Orange — Between 1,001MW and 2,000MW capacity short to meet demand
• Red — Over 2,001MW capacity short to meet demand

The 52-week outlook includes a base unplanned loss assumption of 13,000MW, with its planned risk scenario adding 2,200MW and its likely risk scenario adding 4,200MW to the base loss assumption.

Under Eskom’s likely risk scenario for the weeks from 16 June to 20 July, all five blocks are red, indicating that it will be over 2,001MW short of capacity to meet demands and reserves.

In this scenario, the weeks leading up to 16 June are orange, while the two weeks following are also orange.

This indicates that Eskom will be between 1,001MW and 2,000MW short on capacity.

In its planned risk scenario, all five blocks are yellow, indicating that it will be less than 1,000MW short of meeting demand and reserves.

While not exact, losing more than 2,000MW of generating capacity would necessitate at least Stage 2 load-shedding, aligning with Eskom’s Winter Outlook for 2025.

The power utility presented its Winter Outlook on 5 May 2025, predicting that 21 days of up to Stage 2 load-shedding would be required in its worst-case scenario.

Below is Eskom’s weekly outlook from the week starting 2 June to the week commencing 6 October 2025.

Eskom’s Winter Outlook and a warning about Stage 4 load-shedding

Presenting the power utility’s 2025 Winter Outlook, Eskom CEO Dan Marokane said the likely risk scenario indicates no load-shedding under its base unplanned loss assumption.

According to the power utility, no load-shedding will be required if unplanned outages remain below 13,000MW.

Under this best-case scenario, Eskom must spend R700 million on diesel for its Open-Cycle Gas Turbines (OCGTs) until 31 August 2025.

If unplanned losses reach 14,000MW, the power utility anticipates that just one day of Stage 1 load-shedding will be required.

In this case, its OCGT diesel spend will increase to R2.1 billion.

Eskom said its worst-case scenario will be realised should unplanned capacity losses reach 15,000MW. This will require 21 days of up to Stage 2 load-shedding and R4.8 billion in diesel spending.

Just over a week after presenting its Winter Outlook, Eskom was forced to implement Stage 2 load-shedding during the evening peaks from 13 May until 15 May 2025.

This was due to delays in returning several generation units from maintenance, compounded by some unit breakdowns.

According to Impower energy expert Matthew Cruise, the sudden need to implement Stage 2 load-shedding is concerning, considering demand is only expected to rise as the weather cools.

He said South Africans should prepare for up to Stage 4 load-shedding this winter.

At the time, the power utility’s unplanned losses had already exceeded its worst-case scenario for the winter period, reaching 15,680MW at 23:00 on 13 May 2025.

“We’re currently at 15,680MW in terms of unplanned outages. So we’ve gone way past the 15,000MW that they said would lead to stage 2 load-shedding this winter,” said Cruise.

“We can actually expect that there’s going to be load-shedding up to stage 4, so we need to prepare for that.”