170+ Days without load shedding: temporary or turning point?

South Africans have spent most of the last decade planning life around Stage 4, inverter batteries, and restaurant dinners eaten under emergency lights. So, a stretch of more than 170 days without load shedding can feel like a fever dream. Many of us invested in backup gadgets and power solutions that made late-night deadlines and Netflix marathons survivable.

That pause in scheduled blackouts lands in the middle of a cost-of-living crunch, where every rand has to work harder, and small money moves that cut monthly waste can matter more than another side hustle. The question now is whether this blackout-free run is a proper turning point in South Africa’s power story, or a neat streak that could snap once demand spikes, politics shift, or old plants start acting their age again.

Eskom and the government have been quick to celebrate. The utility previously confirmed 170 consecutive days without load shedding from late March 2024, driven by its Generation Recovery Plan and lower use of expensive diesel peaker plants. By late 2024, that streak had passed 240 days, with billions of rand saved on diesel and winter demand met without scheduled blackouts. More recently, official updates again flagged a 168 to 170 day stretch without cuts, with only a handful of hours of interruptions over several months.

A run of 170-plus days without load shedding shows how much can change in a year, yet it does not erase the decade when rolling blackouts wiped out study time, overtime pay, and small-business margins. The streak is proof that the system can work better, not proof that the crisis is over.

What changed behind the scenes?

The boring, spreadsheet answer is that the Energy Availability Factor, the share of Eskom’s fleet that is actually able to produce power at any given time, has moved in the right direction. After sitting around 55% in 2023, annual EAF climbed to roughly 60 percent in 2024, according to statistics compiled by the CSIR, with unplanned breakdowns lower than before. Eskom’s recent updates show month-to-date EAF climbing above 70% at times in 2025, with year-to-date numbers in the low 60s and unplanned outages more than 2,000 MW lower than a year ago.

That improvement did not happen on vibes. Eskom pushed a multi-year maintenance programme on its coal fleet, spent heavily on refurbishments, and brought units at big stations like Kusile and Medupi back into service. It also finished a major refit at Koeberg nuclear power station, which now contributes around 5 percent of national supply and has had its licence extended for another twenty years, supporting a longer-term baseload plan.

Government policy has nudged things along. The 2022 energy plan opened the door wider for private generation, renewable projects, and rooftop solar, while a revised Integrated Resource Plan is being drawn up to reflect better Eskom performance and a move toward more diversified energy sources. Corporate and household solar installations have exploded since the tax incentives arrived, taking some pressure off the grid at peak times, even if the exact numbers are still debated.

There is also a demand story. Sluggish economic growth kept industrial demand softer than it might have been in a boom cycle. Some big users installed their own generation, which helps Eskom’s balancing act in the short term, although it says a lot about how little trust there was in the utility’s past performance.

Is this sustainable, or election season luck?

Whenever the lights stay on during a politically sensitive period, suspicions arrive quickly. President Cyril Ramaphosa has already had to deny that the halt in power cuts was engineered purely to sweeten voters ahead of the May 2025 election, arguing that better maintenance, more renewable power, and private investment explain the improvement. Critics pointed out that diesel use by peaker plants went up in early 2024, although more recent Eskom numbers show diesel spending running below budget as the fleet stabilised.

South Africa’s grid is in a better place than it was in 2023, yet the system still relies on ageing coal plants, a tight maintenance schedule, and political will to keep reforms moving. A few bad months of breakdowns or delayed projects could drag the country back to Stage 4 memories faster than anyone would like.

The financial picture is also not magically fixed. Eskom reported a loss of around R55 billion in its 2024 financial year, largely because of accounting changes linked to the split of its transmission business, while still carrying debt of roughly R400 billion and battling rising municipal arrears. That balance sheet limits how quickly it can invest in new capacity or transmission lines without outside help.

Long term, Eskom has told lawmakers it wants its supply mix to be mainly clean energy by 2040, with renewable capacity ramped up and coal capacity cut by more than half. That plan is positive for climate risk and operating costs, though it depends on tight project delivery, fresh capital and regulatory clarity on tariffs. Any delays could leave the system exposed again as older coal plants retire.

What load shedding did to the economy

For anyone who had to finish matric during rolling blackouts, the macro-economics can feel abstract, yet the hit to growth was measurable. Research from Investec estimated that load shedding wiped about 2.1 percent off quarterly GDP in one period, with agriculture, transport and trade particularly exposed. Years of unplanned outages pushed companies to spend on diesel, solar and backup systems instead of expansion and hiring.

A long streak without load shedding helps in two ways. It restores a bit of business confidence, which matters for investment decisions, and it cuts Eskom’s diesel bill. Eskom has already reported diesel savings of more than R10 billion year on year once the suspension of load shedding kicked in, with further savings as the streak lengthened. That money should, in theory, free up budget for maintenance and grid work rather than emergency fuel.

For households, the impact is more psychological. No rotating cuts mean no panic-cooking in the afternoon, fewer spoiled groceries and less overtime spent catching up on work that could not happen during Stage 6. Yet electricity tariffs are still climbing, and many people are now servicing debt on inverters and solar kits bought during the worst of the crisis.

So, temporary breather or turning point?

Short answer: it is a genuine improvement with real engineering behind it, yet not a guaranteed future. Several factors could flip the script again:

• A cluster of unit failures at big coal stations that overwhelms the improved EAF numbers.
• Delays at new renewable projects, storage build-out, or grid upgrades.
• Policy drift once the political pressure around elections fades.
• Extreme weather that pushes demand higher or takes generation offline.

At the same time, the old pattern of “Stage 4 every week” is no longer the baseline. A more reliable fleet, better planned maintenance, and diversified supply mean the system can meet demand far more often than it could two years ago. That is the definition of a turning point, even if it remains vulnerable.

If the next few years deliver more load-shedding-free summers, a steadily higher EAF, and new projects feeding into a stronger grid, people will remember this 170-day streak as the moment the crisis began to unwind rather than a lucky run. The verdict depends on what happens now, not on a single headline number.

What South African millennials can do with this breather

You cannot rewrite Eskom’s maintenance plan from your kitchen table, although you can decide how to use a rare period of grid stability. A few practical moves:

1. Audit your energy spending instead of assuming the crisis is over. Check prepaid or post-paid bills over the past year, including any interest on backup-power debt. Redirect some of the money you are no longer burning on emergency takeaways or generator fuel into paying down that debt or building a small emergency fund.
2. Treat backup gear as an insurance policy, not a sunk cost. There is no need to rip out inverters because the outages stopped for a while. Keep maintaining batteries and surge protection so that a surprise return of load shedding does not turn into another round of big purchases.
3. Watch tariff and policy announcements. Tariff hikes and municipal mark-ups will shape your bill more than the presence or absence of Stage 6. Staying on top of new net-metering rules, rooftop solar incentives, or prepaid changes can open savings that do not depend on load-shedding schedules.
4. Plan big life decisions with “some Eskom risk” in mind. Whether it is a home office setup, a small food business, or a crypto mining rig in the spare room, model your numbers on a scenario where blackouts stay rare yet not impossible. The streak shows that planning for resilience pays off.

The bottom line

South Africa’s 170-plus days without load shedding are not a fluke, although they are also not a permanent guarantee. The grid is stronger than it was, and the worst of the Stage 6 era may be behind us if maintenance, new projects, and policy reforms keep moving. For millennials who learnt to study, work, and side-hustle by candlelight, that is a meaningful shift.

The smart play is to bank the gains, keep the contingency plans, and use this period to clean up budgets and gear rather than assuming that Eskom has magically become invincible. If the lights stay on through several more summers, the narrative moves from “temporary relief” to “historic turning point”. Until then, enjoy charging your phone without watching the load-shedding app every hour, while still planning as if the next alert could arrive.

🔴 Have you read these articles yet? Each one is a quick read, and we think you’ll enjoy it.

👉 A healthy mind in a competitive world
👉 Living on a real budget