Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd is South Africa's state-owned electricity utility, wholly owned by the national government with the Minister of Electricity and Energy acting as shareholder representative. From its head office at Megawatt Park in Sunninghill, Sandton, the group operates most of the country's power system: 30 power stations with roughly 47 GW of nominal capacity, a transmission network of about 33,328 km, and a distribution business covering the whole country. Eskom says it supplies more than 86% of South Africa's electricity needs, equivalent to about 20% of the electricity generated in Africa, and it also trades electricity within the Southern African Development Community. It is registered as 2002/015527/30.
A century of South African power supply
The utility dates its origin to 1923, when the Electricity Supply Commission was created; the name Eskom derives from that commission. Its first in-house designed station, the Sabie River Gorge hydro plant, was completed in 1927, and its newest, the coal-fired Medupi station, was commissioned in 2021. Eskom states that about 90% of South African households are now electrified. The group is incorporated as a state-owned company under the Companies Act 71 of 2008 and is subject to the Public Finance Management Act 1 of 1999, which requires an annual shareholder's compact and a corporate plan agreed with government. Tariffs are determined by the National Energy Regulator of South Africa, while the National Nuclear Regulator oversees nuclear safety at Koeberg. Following the 2024 general election, shareholder responsibility moved to the new Department of Electricity and Energy, which sets policy through instruments such as the Integrated Resource Plan and the Electricity Regulation Act.
The generating fleet and the grid
The fleet spans coal-fired stations, the Koeberg nuclear station, hydro and pumped storage schemes, wind, and diesel-fired open cycle gas turbines used for peaking. In August 2026 Koeberg's Unit 1 was taken offline safely, with the company reporting that nuclear safety was assured and the grid remained stable. Eskom has been running the fleet harder on planned maintenance: for the financial year to date to 24 September 2026, planned outages averaged 6,009 MW, or 12.67% of total generation capacity, against 5,233 MW over the same period a year earlier. Open cycle gas turbine generation fell to 151.14 GWh for the period, about 85% below the previous year, and the OCGT load factor dropped from 6.97% to 1.05%. Transmission is being separated from the rest of the group: the National Transmission Company South Africa is now a subsidiary alongside Rotek Industries, which serves the generation fleet.
The FY2026 operational turnaround
Eskom reported an energy availability factor of 68.06% for 1 April to 24 September 2026, its best financial year-to-date figure in six years and 5.64 percentage points above the comparable period. The week of 18 to 24 September 2026 reached 70.44%, a second consecutive week above 70%, and more than half the coal fleet is now running at EAF levels above 70%. Unplanned outages averaged 7,622 MW that week, down from 9,633 MW a year before, and the unplanned capacity loss factor fell from 20.25% to 15.72%. Over three years the company has returned about 6,461 MW of generating capacity to the grid. Diesel expenditure for the financial year to date fell by R4.78 billion, or 80.56%, to R1.16 billion as reliance on emergency generation eased. Particulate emissions came in at 0.32 kg/MWhSO against a target of 0.35 kg/MWhSO, a level the utility says it has beaten since October 2025.
Load shedding, load reduction and customers
South Africa had gone 497 consecutive days without load shedding by 25 September 2026, counted from 16 May 2025. The remaining constraint is load reduction, the practice of curbing supply to areas with high illegal connections and losses: the number of affected customers has fallen from 1.69 million to 247,617, or 3.4% of the customer base, with seven provinces cleared and a target of eradicating the practice by March 2027. On the revenue side, the City of Johannesburg settled R5.25 billion of overdue electricity debt in full in August 2026. Eskom also restricted 101 suppliers for periods of up to ten years after disciplinary proceedings that month.
Reporting, governance and the just transition
Results for the year ended 31 March 2026 were presented to stakeholders on 31 August 2026, together with an integrated report, annual financial statements, a sustainability report and two new documents, a governance and remuneration report and a performance report. In September 2026 the board chairperson, Mteto Nyati, had his term extended by three years. Eskom frames its Just Energy Transition around three elements, described as just, energy and transition, and plans to re-power decommissioned coal-fired stations with renewable plants built on site, including agrivoltaics with local communities. The head office can be reached on +27 11 800 8111, with media enquiries handled by a dedicated media desk and investor enquiries by an investor relations mailbox.