Eskom Says Load Shedding Is Over. South Africa Still Had 92,000 Power Cuts Last Year.
Eskom hit 300 days without load shedding in March 2026. Officials called it a turning point. But a new energy report shows that South Africa's power problem has not gone away. It has just moved somewhere less visible.
The Numbers Behind the Outages
The Wetility 2025 Energy Resilience Report, released on March 31, 2026, tracked every unplanned power outage across South Africa last year. The total: 91,934 failures.
South Africa averaged more than 250 unplanned power outages per day in 2025. The average cut lasted 12.1 hours. More than half lasted longer than 8 hours.
For businesses without backup power, the report estimates up to 132 hours of unplanned downtime per month. That is more than three full working weeks of trading time, lost to blackouts that were never on any schedule.
None of these are load shedding. Load shedding is when Eskom deliberately cuts power in rotating blocks to protect the national grid. What this report measures is different. These are failures that happen outside Eskom's control and outside any schedule.
Where the Failures Are Coming From
The problem is not at Eskom's power stations. Eskom's generation has improved. The problem is in the wires between the power station and your shop.
Ikenna Oguguo, president of Wetility Group, put it plainly: "We are now seeing two parallel trends. One where generation is improving and another where there are many localised failures."
Three things are driving those local failures:
- Cable theft. Criminals steal copper cables from distribution lines, often repeatedly in the same areas. Replacing cables takes time. Some areas wait weeks.
- Municipal maintenance backlogs. Many municipal electricity networks have not been properly maintained in years. Old equipment fails without warning.
- Aging distribution infrastructure. South Africa's local grid was built decades ago. Parts of it were never upgraded to handle current loads.
Eskom can improve its generation all it wants. But if the wire running to your block is stolen or broken, your shop goes dark anyway.
Not All Provinces Are Equal
The outage impact is not spread evenly. Gauteng, which includes Johannesburg and Pretoria, recorded an average outage duration of 14 hours. The Eastern Cape recorded 6.6 hours.
That gap matters. A Johannesburg shop owner loses twice as much trading time per outage as someone in Port Elizabeth. And it is not because Gauteng generates less power. It is because Gauteng's dense urban network has more aging infrastructure, more cable theft, and more demand pressure on local distribution systems.
What This Costs Your Business
The direct costs stack up fast.
A fridge full of cold drinks stops cooling. Perishable stock spoils. Customers turn away because the till cannot process card payments or the lights are off. If you run a salon, a takeaway, or a general dealer, every hour without power is an hour of no revenue.
During Stage 6 load shedding in 2023, South Africa's economy was losing around R900 million per day. Small businesses bore a disproportionate share. They have fewer resources to absorb the loss than large retailers do.
The indirect costs are harder to measure but just as real. The cost of buying ice to keep stock cool. The generator fuel you burn every time the power goes. The customers who stop trusting that you will be open.
How Businesses Are Responding
Demand for backup power has not slowed down despite Eskom's load-shedding progress. Reports suggest it is growing, driven by awareness of unplanned outages.
Businesses are choosing between three main options:
- Generators. Affordable upfront but expensive to run. Diesel costs add up fast during long outages.
- Solar with battery storage. A small commercial system between 20 kW and 50 kW costs roughly R400,000 to R900,000 installed. That is a big investment for a spaza store. But it cuts long-term energy costs and protects against both scheduled and unplanned cuts.
- Hybrid systems. Solar during the day, battery for short cuts, generator as a last resort for extended failures. This is becoming more common among medium-sized retailers and food businesses.
For very small businesses, a basic inverter and battery setup covering lights, a till, and a small fridge is far cheaper than a full solar install. Many shop owners are starting there and expanding later.
Why This Matters
The "load shedding is over" story is reassuring but incomplete. For small business owners in South Africa, the power problem has changed shape rather than ended. The new version, unplanned and unpredictable, caused by local grid failures, is in some ways harder to plan around. There is no schedule to work with.
You cannot open early to get ahead of an outage you did not know was coming. You cannot prepare for a cut that arrives at 2pm on a Tuesday with no warning. That unpredictability is its own cost.
Businesses that invest in backup power, even a basic setup, are buying trading hours. Sales that do not disappear when the lights go out. In a market where margins are thin, those hours are worth protecting.
Conclusion
South Africa had 91,934 unplanned power cuts in 2025, averaging over 12 hours each. Eskom's generation has improved, but the local distribution network, hit by cable theft, maintenance backlogs, and aging equipment, is still failing businesses every day. For shop owners and vendors, the most useful question is no longer whether load shedding will return. It is whether your business can keep trading through the cuts that are already happening.
