Eskom officials have forecast that there will be rolling blackouts (between stages 1 and 3) every day during December and January -- except for six days. And that is the best-case scenario. Electricity situation looks dire for most of 2024 and early 2025, with demand on the rise and uncomfortable levels of unplanned blackouts.

A forecast by Eskom officials on the state of SA's electricity system has shown that there will be consistent blackouts in December and January -- contradicting the recent claims made by Electricity Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa.

Eskom officials recently delivered a presentation to the Consumer Goods Council of SA, an industry body representing SA's biggest retailers, detailing that the country will still be subject to deep power cuts in December and January.

Daily Maverick has seen the 30-page presentation dated 22 November.

The officials forecast that there will be blackouts (between stages 1 and 3) every day during December -- except for three days. This is the best-case scenario, which relies on fewer unplanned breakdowns at Eskom power stations. The worst-case scenario involves load shedding of between stages 4 and 6 every day during December, with no respite. A similar best and worst-case scenario is forecast for January.

Eskom has forecast that the peak residual use over December and January will be between 23,000MW and 27,000MW, while planned outages (usually a result of generating units at power stations being taken offline for maintenance) are expected to be between 6,800MW and 10,100MW.

Exacerbating this situation is that unplanned outages (usually as a...