Eskom’s transmission arm has once again compensated for its other businesses that continue to perform poorly.
While Eskom has reported a significant profit for the first half of the 2025 financial year, this is only due to its transmission business, as its generation and distribution arms continue to perform poorly.
This is according to Eskom’s interim results, which reported a R17 billion profit for the six months leading up to 30 September 2024.This was just under R8 billion more than reported over the same period in 2023. On the other hand, the generation business reflected a loss of R4.3 billion, while the distribution business resulted in Eskom losing R857 million. This is nothing new, as transmission was also the state utility’s saving grace when it reported its results for the same period ending 30 September 2023. During those six months, the transmission business realised a R13.6 billion profit that compensated for Eskom’s losses in the other two arms. Generation experienced the biggest loss at R10.9 billion and distribution a R947 million loss. While Eskom’s financials typically suffer during the second half of its financial year, the power utility is optimistic about the rest of 2025. It has predicted a R10 billion profit by the end of the 2025 financial year, implying that its losses for the latter half of the year will be capped at R7 billion. Last year, Eskom reported a R55 billion full-year loss after recording a R1.6 billion profit in its interim results. If Eskom achieves a profit when it reports its 2024/25 annual results, it would be the first time this has happened since 2017. Eskom’s remarkable turnaround, which has seen the country go 309 days without load-shedding, has been described as a “great performance” by energy expert Chris Yelland. This, combined with reduced demand and increased supply, has allowed load-shedding to remain suspended in South Africa. The state utility drastically improved its energy availability factor over the previous two years and significantly reduced its unplanned capacity loss factor compared to 2023. EAF shows the percentage of time power stations were available for use when needed. It is a core measure of performance for any power utility. “From April 2024, the week-on-week EAF trend graph for the 2024 calendar year is consistently higher than that for 2023, with planned maintenance consistently higher for the full 2024 calendar year and UCLF consistently lower for the full 2024 calendar year,” said Yelland. PCLF measures the ratio of Eskom power stations offline for planned maintenance, while UCLF can be viewed as the percentage of generating units offline during unplanned outages.Many South Africans were sceptical about the abrupt and long-lasting load-shedding suspension.its Generation Operational Recovery PlanThe plan focused on accelerating planned maintenance, increasing preventative maintenance, and completing major plant refurbishments and life extension projects. Eskom focused on its six worst-performing power stations, which had contributed 70% of Eskom’s unit failure in previous years. It noted that five power stations were performing well and thus focused on poorly performing plants as they present a higher threat of preventing the utility from meeting demand.
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