Eskom’s Bold Bet: 200 AI Pilots, Data Scientists, and a ‘Self-Healing’ Grid

Eskom is placing a massive bet on artificial intelligence.

The power utility is recruiting data scientists and piloting approximately 200 AI projects as it lays the groundwork for a “self-healing” national gridone that can tackle its own challenges independent of human oversight.

The Vision

Len de Villiers, Eskom’s chief IT officer, outlined the strategy at the Huawei Industrial Digital and Intelligent Transformation Summit in Barcelona.

“What we have realised is that AI is something you deploy from the top of the organisation and is driven by the leadership of the company,” De Villiers said.

“It should become a culture in the company. We have a very strong AI directive with a clear mandate.”

The goal: every person in Eskom will be allowed to experiment with AI within defined guardrails. “We are going to make sure that AI is not inhibited but is carefully directed.”

The Pilots

Among the 200 pilots underway is a predictive fault management system. AI is also being deployed in sales and customer service.

The intelligent substation project, however, is underdelivering with Huawei, the Chinese firm that has worked in South Africa for more than two decades.

The Shift

Al’Louise Van Deventer, Eskom’s technology and engineering general manager, told the Huawei Electric Power Forum that modernisation is not just a technology updateit’s a “fundamental” shift.

“For decades, we operated in silos: the grid team kept the power flowing while the retail team managed the bills, and the customer was somewhere else. Modernisation dismantles those walls.”

The vision: a self-healing grid that allows field teams to move from crisis response to precision maintenance, and enables data-based decision-making in hours, not months.

The Investment

Eskom is looking to tap capital markets again over the next three years, aiming to invest billions annually over the next five years in maintaining and expanding infrastructure.

The plan: about R320 billion (roughly R64 billion a year) over five years.

• 40% for generation capacity and pipeline

• 40% for transmission development

• 20% for distribution network upgrades

The Context

Eskom reported its first profit in eight years in 2025, underlining operational and financial progress. The generation recovery plan has brought stability to the grid.

Now, the focus shifts from stability to modernisationfrom keeping the lights on to building a grid that can think for itself.

The Bottom Line

Two hundred pilots. A new culture of experimentation. A self-healing grid as the ultimate goal.

Eskom is betting that AI can transform not just how it operates, but what it is. The question is whether the utility that kept the lights on through a decade of crisis can now build the grid of the future.

{Source: Businssday}

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