518 days without load shedding. Customers stopped making allowances.

On Friday Eskom reported 518 consecutive days without load shedding, counting from 16 May 2025. That is long enough for a habit to die. For two years customers forgave the late quote, the missed call and the job that slipped a day, because everyone knew why. That allowance has quietly run out.

The numbers behind the streak look solid. In its update of 16 October, Eskom put its energy availability factor for the financial year so far, 1 April to 15 October, at 68.2%, its highest level in six years. It spent R1.18 billion on diesel in that period, R4.87 billion less than a year earlier. The utility is no longer burning emergency fuel to keep the lights on.

What changed for service businesses

Many owners built their working week around the outage schedule. Site visits were booked between slots, quotes went out once the power came back, and some priced generator diesel into every job. Those buffers made sense in 2023. Today they mostly make a business slower than it needs to be, and a customer comparing three quotes has no reason to wait for yours.

There is a caveat. Load reduction, the area-by-area cuts Eskom still applies in parts of the network, affected 193,556 customers at the latest count, about 2.7% of its base. Seven provinces now have none. EWN reported on 4 October that the rest are in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal, and that Eskom has committed to ending load reduction by March 2027. If you work in those areas, some of your customers and sites still lose power on a schedule.

A short audit worth doing this week

• Look at the buffer days in your quoting and booking. If they exist for outages that no longer happen, cut them and tell customers you can move faster.
• Check whether generator or diesel costs are still baked into your rates. If the generator has not run in months, that line is either margin you should know about or a price you could sharpen.
• Keep the backup you already own serviced. A grid that has held for 518 days is a good run, not a guarantee.

For installers the change cuts the other way. Engineering News reported in June that rooftop solar capacity had passed 8.3 GW, according to Eskom's National Transmission Company, and that installations kept rising after the worst outages because higher tariffs have made solar cheaper than grid power. The pitch has moved from keeping the lights on to cutting the bill, and customers who buy on savings compare harder and take longer to decide.

The power excuse covered a lot of slow habits. It does not cover them any more.

Eskom's next weekly update is due on Friday, 23 October. Whatever it says, the businesses that gain most from a stable grid will be the ones that stopped planning around a crisis that has already passed.