Ramokgopa apologises, admits management and planning failures as load shedding hits again

14 May 2025

Minister of Energy and Electricity Kgosientsho Ramokgopa said the root cause of this most recent bout of load shedding was the result of management and planning issues as opposed to specific machinery-related problems at Eskom.

Electricity and Energy Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa has ascribed the current bout of load shedding to “outage slips”, adding that the country had moved beyond “structural load shedding”.

The minister explained on Wednesday morning that, with several generating units coming back online in time for winter, “from a structural point of view” the country’s “generation base” has about 2,500 megawatts – or more than two stages of load shedding – of additional capacity compared with the same period last year.

“Structural load shedding” referred to the “fundamentals that underpin our generation capacity” and these had been “resolved”. The fundamentals included planning and ensuring maintenance levels were aligned with electricity demand.

Ramokgopa was briefing the media following the most recent load shedding.

On Tuesday, Eskom said it would implement Stage 2 load shedding during the evening peak from 4pm on that day until 10pm on Thursday “to manage limited generation capacity and ensure continued supply during the working days. This decision follows the delayed return of generation units amounting to 3,120MW, as well as an additional loss of 1,385MW in the past 24 hours due to unplanned breakdowns”.

Daily Maverick has reported that as part of its winter outlook presentation, Eskom CEO Dan Marokane said the country could expect a load shedding‑free winter, provided unplanned outages remained below 13GW. Should breakdowns edge up to 15GW, Eskom forecasted no more than 21 days of Stage 2 cuts.

“We have breached that red line,” Ramokgopa said on Wednesday, explaining that this is exactly what has happened with capacity losses exceeding this upper threshold, leading to load shedding.

Read more: Eskom bets on 13 GW ceiling to deliver a load shedding‑free winter

The minister said that “all of the things we have shared with the rest of the country regarding the winter outlook, they remain valid”.

‘Outage slips’

Explaining the most recent bout of load shedding, Ramokgopa said a part of it was that Eskom was “tapering down planned maintenance”.

“So the reason why we’re here today is primarily because that promise of making sure that that planned maintenance comes down to below 5,000 [MW], we have not been able to fulfil it.

“So, essentially, we have experienced what in technical terms we call outage slips.”

He likened an outage slip to servicing a car:

“Just imagine you take your car to a dealership for a service and they tell you ‘bring it in the morning and then you’ll have it available in the afternoon at five’ and then at five, you go, they tell you ‘sorry we’re not ready’.

“I’m using that as an illustration,” the minister said, adding that “in this instance, we failed to meet that promise. So that car that we said will be delivered by the end of business has not been delivered.”

Accordingly, because this “car” was not available as promised, other means, which were not necessarily in place, must be made available.

Put differently, Eskom planned to bring on additional capacity from units that were unavailable because of maintenance, but its failure to do so in line with its “intense planning” resulted in an absence of sufficient capacity to avoid load shedding.

“In this instance, those outage slips amount to about 3,100MW,” Ramokgopa said.

“Those units have not come back as a result of a multiplicity of reasons.”

Read more: Eskom bets big on renewables with new ‘green’ subsidiary

In 2023, during South Africa’s most intense load shedding period, outage slips averaged between 2,700MW and 3,500MW. The average had since been brought down to below 1,000MW. However, over the past month, Eskom’s outage slips have returned to 2023 levels.

“And once we have those outage slips, there’s very little headroom for you to accommodate any losses in relation to generation capacity,” the minister explained.

Read more: Eskom news

He added that these generation units, which consist of moving engineering parts, will sometimes inevitably fail and the absence of a sufficient cushion to avoid these losses turning into load shedding is evidence not of an engineering problem but a management issue.

Ramokgopa, apologising to the country, also said Eskom’s executive team would be engaging with general managers at various power stations.

“This is a planning issue, this is a management issue, and on this occasion we have not covered ourselves in glory.” DM

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‘Outage slips’