Eskom reports its best availability in six years and a diesel bill down four fifths.

A power purchase agreement holder pricing the year ahead now has the utility's own numbers showing spare capacity rather than shortfall. Eskom put that spare capacity at 5 695MW, framing it as room for industrial growth. The energy availability factor, meaning the share of fleet capacity actually able to generate, reached 68.2% for the financial year to 8 October 2026, up from 62.63% in the same stretch last year and the best figure at this point in six years.

The cost side moved further. Diesel spending between 1 April and 8 October 2026 totalled R1.16 billion, against R5.98 billion a year earlier, a fall of R4.82 billion or 80.58%. Over the same months the load factor on the open-cycle gas turbines, the diesel-fired plant Eskom calls on when the coal fleet falls short, sat at 0.98% against 6.50% last year, well inside a 3% annual target.

Load reduction, the targeted cutting of supply in areas where illegal connections and meter tampering damage the network, now reaches 193 556 customers, down from 1.69 million, or 2.7% of the customer base. Seven of the nine provinces are clear of it, and what remains sits in selected parts of Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal. Load shedding itself has now been absent for 511 days in a row, counted from 16 May 2025.

Read together, the availability gain and the near-absent diesel burn shift a buyer's question from whether electricity arrives to what it costs, and in the South African electricity market that price is settled in a NERSA determination rather than by the presence of a surplus.

The forecast evening peak for 9 October 2026 was 23 966MW against 26 143MW available excluding gas, leaving roughly 2 177MW of headroom on the day. The system status and the summer outlook are still to be published, and the next weekly set of figures falls on 16 October 2026, which is where a reader watching for the first sign of the trend turning will see it.