Sparks fly as Ramokgopa cracks whip over Eskom blackouts

Eskom’s maintenance delays have slipped to levels last seen in 2023, forcing the utility to impose the current bout of power cuts and the energy & electricity minister to call for accountability.

The regression, rooted in delays that exceed scheduled maintenance targets, is likely to stir public frustration and conjure up memories of 2023, when the country suffered under 329 days’ load-shedding.

The relapse came after a remarkable turnaround in 2024 that spared the nation from prolonged power cuts, with only 13 days of load-shedding.

At a closely watched press conference, electricity minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa blasted the current “outage slips” as a byproduct of a “management problem” and referred to “hard and candid conversations” with those at the helm at Eskom, including CEO Dan Marokane.

The Eskom executive, in turn, will have heart-to-heart talks with power station GMs, he said. 

Once viewed as mere bumps in the recovery journey, the latest lapses could reignite concerns over Eskom’s operational discipline.

The implications stretch far beyond the confines of Eskom maintenance schedules. The return to past levels of operational inefficiency could jeopardise investors’ confidence and reverse the economic momentum. 

Eskom had been boasting about a stable system as recently as April, with the energy availability factor — the share of installed capacity producing power — creeping up to about 60%, its highest in years, thanks to a record ramp-up of planned maintenance.

Officials even mused about a load-shedding-free winter, provided unplanned breakdowns remained under 15,000MW. 

But as early winter demand rose, reality bit.

Eskom has planned to “taper down” maintenance to less than 5,000MW by late April, yet several big units remained in the workshop past their due dates. 

In the first weeks of May, these “outage slips” — maintenance overruns — swelled to about 3,100MW, meaning “we have failed to meet this promise” to taper down maintenance, Ramokgopa said. 

He said it was time for accountability, or so-called consequence management, especially as Eskom had 2,500MW more capacity than in last year’s winter.

Other reasons for this “misstep”, as he called it, is third parties that did not deliver, referring to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) that Eskom relies on. “But this is for us to manage,” he added. 

The delayed returns, combined with an uptick in unexpected breakdowns, meant the power system no longer had the margin to meet peak demand, resulting in the announcement of stage 2 load-shedding this week.

“We have not covered ourselves in glory,” Ramokgopa said.

Marokane said the forecast was premised on a tapering down of planned maintenance, which was not achieved due to the inability to stick to deadlines for the return to service of six units. 

Better planning

Ramokgopa said Eskom had to engage the OEMs and ensure better planning and management of their contributions. 

Outage slips were less than 2,500MW during periods of intense load-shedding. As that dropped to below 1,000MW, load-shedding was curbed, but this is now back to 2023 levels, he said.

Ramokgopa apologised “profusely” to the public for the current load-shedding and said it undermined confidence in the power supply, harmed the economy and “disrupts people’s lives”.

Marokane said that Eskom’s winter plan remained valid and added that unplanned breakdowns of generating units remained less than 11,400MW before May 12. “That is really where we want to be running our fleet, and even better.”

He said the utility had learnt lessons from similar situations that resulted in load-shedding earlier this year, and was trying to stem it by focusing on the availability of skills and spares and the discipline to stick to the schedule.

Marokane said Eskom had also changed its planning approach to OEMs and was much more involved earlier in the process. He said this had “brought closer to us” some of the OEMs that could assist Eskom with specialised areas that had caused some of the recent problems.

He said that by mid-May planned maintenance would be reduced to 5,000MW and further to 4,000MW. 

The outage slippages were mainly at six units in Duvha, Medupi, Grootvlei, Kriel and Tutuka. These were worsened by two safety-related incidents at Kusile and Lethabo.

He said the work to improve planning and collaboration with OEMs was under way, with some previously contracted OEMs providing valuable insights to speed up solutions for material and technical challenges.

Update: May 14 2025
This story has been updated with new information throughout.