South Africa generated much less electrical energy in June than in any June in at the very least seven years, together with June 2020, when a lot of the financial system was shut underneath Covid-19 restrictions. It did so whereas Eskom’s energy stations had been performing higher than at any level since 2017.
Information printed by Statistics South Africa on Thursday reveals electrical energy technology fell 8.1% 12 months on 12 months in June to 18.9TWh, a thirteenth consecutive month of year-on-year decline. The unadjusted index of technology volumes got here in at 89.8 in opposition to a 2019 base of 100, the weakest June within the seven years of knowledge proven within the launch.
None of this displays a return of the plant failures that outlined the load-shedding years. Eskom stated this week that the nation has gone 441 consecutive days with out load shedding, that its vitality availability issue hit 82.04% on 26 July, its finest single day since 2017, and that unplanned outages within the week to 30 July averaged 47.8% lower than in the identical week a 12 months earlier. Demand was met 100% of the time between 1 April and 30 July.
The utility has, in different phrases, repaired its fleet right into a shrinking market.
The squeeze reveals up in Eskom’s share of what the nation produces. Stats SA publishes every of its two sequence — electrical energy generated, and electrical energy accessible for distribution inside South Africa — twice over: as soon as for all producers and as soon as for the nationwide electrical energy provider alone. The second is a subset of the primary, so subtracting one from the opposite offers all the pieces produced by everybody else, which means impartial energy producers (IPPs), municipal mills and personal crops that fall contained in the survey.
Below strain
Technology is the cleaner of the 2 measures. Eskom’s energy stations produced 92.1TWh within the first half of 2026, down 9.5% 12 months on 12 months, in opposition to a 7% decline for all producers mixed. On TechCentral’s calculation from the Stats SA tables, that leaves non-Eskom technology at 15.6TWh for the six months, up 10.4% or 1.47TWh on the identical interval final 12 months. Eskom’s share of all the pieces generated within the nation fell from 87.8% to 85.5%, a lack of 2.3 share factors in a single 12 months. In June alone, Eskom produced 16.32TWh of the nationwide whole of 18.9TWh, or 86.3%.
The distribution sequence strikes the identical manner. Stats SA derives it by taking technology, including imports and subtracting exports and the electrical energy energy stations burn working themselves. On that foundation, Eskom’s determine fell 6.3% to 83.9TWh within the first half in opposition to a 3.9% decline nationally, taking its share from 86.7% to 84.6%.
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Put the traits collectively and the form is one acquainted to any regulated utility underneath strain:
- Complete demand is falling;
- Eskom’s share of what stays is falling quicker; and
- The volumes it loses are those that carry its mounted prices — a coal fleet, a transmission community and a debt burden that don’t shrink when gross sales do.
Spreading these prices over fewer models means larger tariffs, and better tariffs strengthen the case for each buyer with a roof, a steadiness sheet or a wheeling settlement to depart.
The survey can’t see all of that. Stats SA attracts on a pattern of 24 enterprises, supplemented with knowledge the nationwide provider offers on impartial producers and on wheeling, and excludes any enterprise with whole producing capability beneath 500kW. That leaves most small-scale embedded technology — and rooftop photo voltaic above all — exterior the image fully. Regardless of the numbers present about clients leaving the system, the actual determine is bigger.
Two additional caveats apply to the break up itself. It’s a producer-side attribution and says nothing about who buys the ability or whose wires carry it, so it isn’t a direct measure of grid defection: renewables constructed underneath the federal government’s procurement programme promote to Eskom and journey throughout its community, but sit within the residual. The volumes transferring via preparations reminiscent of Cape City’s pooled wheeling of renewable electrical energy are the a part of the shift the numbers can see.
As TechCentral has reported, the top of load shedding has uncovered a unique set of issues, amongst them stalled market reform, curtailment of impartial energy producers and a backlog in compensation funds owed to them.
A few of the lacking quantity by no means had a home purchaser. South Africa’s electrical energy exports have collapsed, and in June the nation pulled in additional energy throughout its borders than it despatched out, a putting reversal for a grid that was nonetheless a considerable web provider to the area a 12 months in the past.
The Stats SA knowledge reveals 690GWh of electrical energy flowed into South Africa in June, in opposition to 469GWh flowing out. Inflows had been up 31.7% 12 months on 12 months whereas outflows fell 62.3%. Stats SA doesn’t identify Eskom, referring all through to the nationwide electrical energy provider, however all of the metered cross-border stream within the launch is attributed to it.
Regional demand
The shift will not be a one-month anomaly. Over the primary half of 2026, outflows fell 35.7% to 4.54TWh whereas inflows rose 17.4% to 4.12TWh. That leaves web exports of simply 419GWh for the six months, down from 3.55TWh in the identical interval of 2025, a decline of 88%.
It additionally resolves a puzzle within the headline numbers. Electrical energy distributed contained in the nation fell solely 2.8% in June, to 17.67TWh, in opposition to the 8.1% drop in technology. The hole is essentially energy that used to depart the nation. On TechCentral’s calculation, the drop in June exports accounts for near half of the year-on-year fall in technology that month, a much bigger single part than the decline in home consumption.
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The identical arithmetic explains why Eskom’s distribution determine fell by lower than its technology determine. Its output dropped 9.61TWh over the six months, nevertheless it exported 2.52TWh much less, used 884GWh much less working its personal plant and imported 610GWh extra, which collectively clawed again a lot of the distinction and left the distributed determine 5.59TWh decrease.
A part of the reason lies north of the Limpopo. Regional demand for emergency energy spiked through the El Niño drought that crippled hydropower at Lake Kariba, and people situations have eased. On the finish of October final 12 months, the Zambezi River Authority allotted 30 billion cubic metres of water for technology at Kariba in 2026, break up equally between Zambia’s Zesco and Zimbabwe’s ZPC, citing a standard to above-normal rainfall forecast for the 2025/2026 season. Higher regional hydrology means much less want for costly imported energy from South Africa.
Eskom’s personal numbers had till just lately pointed the opposite manner. In its interim outcomes for the primary six months of FY2026, masking April to September 2025, the utility reported worldwide gross sales up 4% to six.8TWh at the same time as native gross sales fell 3% to 86TWh. The Stats SA border knowledge means that export cushion has since disappeared.
Nonetheless, there may be one supply of recent demand giant sufficient to vary the arithmetic: South Africa’s knowledge centre pipeline, which may add many a whole lot of megawatts to nationwide electrical energy demand if all of the introduced initiatives are constructed. — © 2026 NewsCentral Media
