JOHANNESBURG, Sept 5 (Reuters) - South African state utility Eskom said on Friday it expects no power cuts over the southern hemisphere summer months, barring a rise in breakdowns at its facilities.

Eskom's difficulties supplying electricity to Africa's biggest economy have curbed economic growth for more than a decade, but a turnaround in performance at its power plants reduced outages to 13 days last summer from 176 days the year before.

Company executives said at a press conference on the electricity outlook for the period between September 2025 and March 2026, roughly equivalent to South Africa's summer, that further improvements meant it was confident it could provide uninterrupted power supply in the months ahead.

"We are entering this summer with some headroom that should enable us to do our maintenance. We didn't have this last year," Chief Executive Officer Dan Marokane said.

"It is this reason that we foresee no loadshedding (power cuts) for the cases where unplanned losses remain below 15,000 megawatts (MW)."

Eskom said unplanned electricity losses dropped to roughly 10,000 MW in August, far below levels seen in recent years, when South Africans became used to power cuts on a near-daily basis.

The utility has plants with a nominal capacity of about 46,000 MW, mostly coal-fired, but it also operates a nuclear power station and some smaller plants that burn diesel or use water to generate electricity.