South Africa has taken a huge step towards declaring the end of load shedding in the country, with Eskom announcing that Unit 6 of Kusile Power Station has officially entered commercial operation.
This milestone means that the full 9,600MW capacity has been unlocked across Eskom’s flagship power stations, Kusile and Medupi, giving significant support to the grid.
It also marks the end of the construction of the two power stations, which have been billions of rands over budget and delayed by more than a decade.
Medupi and Kusile were started in 2007, and the plan was for the power stations to be completed in 2014. However, neither met their deadline.
Both projects exceeded their budgets by a combined R300 billion.
“Together, these stations form the backbone of the country’s baseload electricity supply. With Unit 6 now online, Kusile and Medupi can deliver a combined 9,600MW when operating at full capacity, significantly strengthening South Africa’s electricity supply,” Eskom said.
Eskom said that since Unit 6’s synchronisation in March, it has consistently met performance benchmarks, contributed to grid reliability, and helped meet electricity demand 97% of the time.
“Medupi and Kusile will remain central to South Africa’s electricity supply for many years to come. Both stations are designed for an operational lifespan of approximately 50 years,” it said.
Commercial operation indicates that the unit has passed all required testing and optimisation phases and is now fully integrated into Eskom’s operational fleet.
Although the unit has been supplying electricity to the grid since its synchronisation on 23 March 2025, its contribution has not been reflected in official reporting until now.
From this point onward, Unit 6’s output will be included in the Energy Availability Factor (EAF) calculations, contributing to Eskom’s overall performance metrics.
This is notable given that Eskom’s EAF performance has already hit four-year highs, sitting above 70%. At these levels of performance, load shedding should not even be on the menu.
The country has gone 135 consecutive days without load shedding, with only 26 hours recorded between 1 April and 25 September 2025.
Despite the turnaround in performance and confidence that outages can be kept at bay, Eskom and the energy department have not yet declared the end of load shedding.
While performance has stated a miraculous turnaround, overall energy demand is also lower—partly due to customers turning to alternatives and partly due to energy costs.
The grid needs to add more capacity to support economic growth and also to account for the coming loss of generating units which will reach their end-of-life over the coming decade.
To this point, Eskom said that it is accelerating efforts to expand its renewable energy portfolio to complement its baseload infrastructure.
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(source: Businesstech)