Electricity warning for South Africa’s biggest city

City Power spokesperson Isaac Mangena says the utility’s electricity network is under pressure due to heavy rainfall over the weekend, leaving many Johannesburg residents without power.

Speaking to SABC News on Sunday evening, Mangena said the power utility had around 3,000 active outage calls across the city. He noted that the number of outage calls had reduced from a peak of around 3,500 on Saturday, 4 January 2025.

However, while the utility is making progress in restoring power, many areas face prolonged outages. City Power has warned that inclement weather could result in delayed repairs.

“Please take note that the possibility of inclement weather could affect our response time to outages,” it said in an outage update for Hursthill posted on X (formerly Twitter) on Monday, 6 January.

“The power system is constrained. We urge customers to reduce their electricity consumption to prevent overloading the system.”

The inclement weather doesn’t seem to be lifting anytime soon. The SA Weather Service issued a level 5 warning of disruptive rains and possibly flooding in Gauteng.

Mangena warned that this would impact City Power’s ability to restore power in a timely manner.

“It’s obviously going to affect some of our operations because when it is raining, it isn’t easy to deal with some of the faults, fault finding, and digging trenches,” he said.

In his update to SABC News on Sunday, Mangena highlighted several areas in which City Power still had to attend to outages. For example, at the time, City Power had 671 outage calls for the Inner City of Johannesburg.

“We’re still having some part of central substation, especially those affecting Cleveland and even some parts of Western CBD, where we are still struggling with finalising the repairs,” he added.

“We’re still also having outages in Tshepisong, under Roodepoort, where we’re sitting at 709 outage calls. Tshepisong lines A, C, and D were lost.”

Mangena noted that lines A and D had been restored, while a City Power update for the area says Tshepisong Line C is still offline and that repairs will continue today.

Mangena said Hursthill, which includes Roosevelt Park and the Linden South distributor, had been largely restored, with only some streets still experiencing outages.

However, according to City Power’s latest update for Hursthill on X, it still has 724 open outage calls and 38 out-of-service plants.

At the same time, in its latest update for the Inner City, the power utility reported having 752 open calls, up from the 671 reported on Sunday afternoon.

Other areas of Johannesburg with high numbers of outage calls include Randburg, with 628 open calls; Roodepoort, with 526 calls; Midrand, with 104 calls; Reuven, with 335 calls; and Alexandra, with 143 calls.

City Power added that it has 36 out-of-service plants in Midrand and 58 in Roodepoort.

Load reduction suspended in Joburg

The reduction in demand on City Power’s grid over December as businesses closed and residents travelled for the festive season allowed the power utility to temporarily suspend load reduction.

Load reduction is a mechanism electricity providers use in specific areas with insufficient capacity, where the area will lose electricity supply for several hours to manage demand.

Power providers like City Power employ the tactic to ensure transformers aren’t damaged due to overloading.

The temporary suspension of load reduction is expected to last until the end of January 2025. However, City Power has warned that it could be forced to resume load reduction early with little notice.

“During this period, we strongly encourage customers to use electricity sparingly to avoid triggering the need for an emergency reinstatement of load reduction,” it said.

“If a significant spike in consumption is detected, City Power may be forced to implement load reduction with little to no prior notice to prevent the grid from total collapse.”