Power outages today

This page tracks power outages reported in real time across South Africa, based on geolocated reports from users of GeoBlackout.

The South African grid is one of the most discussed electricity systems on the African continent, shaped by a decade of load shedding, a state utility under reform and a wholesale market opening in 2026.

The sections below explain who produces, transports, distributes and sells electricity in the country, why outages happen and how to report a fault to the right operator. If you are looking for the load shedding side specifically, jump to the dedicated section further down.

• Who produces, transports, distributes and sells electricity in South Africa
• What load shedding is, why it ran from 2007 to 2024 and where it stands today
• How to identify the operator responsible for an outage at your address
• How fibre and mobile networks have adapted to a decade of power cuts

Eskom, the state utility behind 95% of the grid

Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd is the state-owned utility that has dominated the South African electricity system since 1923. The company generates roughly 95% of the electricity consumed in the country and around 45% of all the electricity produced on the African continent.

Its fleet remains overwhelmingly coal-based, complemented by the Koeberg nuclear station near Cape Town, hydroelectric and pumped storage plants, and open cycle gas turbines used as peaking capacity.

Eskom is also the country's largest direct supplier. About 45% of all end users in South Africa, mostly large industrials, mining operations and some residential areas, are billed directly by Eskom.

The remaining 55% are served by redistributors, almost all of them municipalities, who buy electricity in bulk from Eskom and resell it to their residents with a markup.

The Energy Availability Factor (EAF), the share of installed capacity that is actually producing at any given time, dropped from over 90% in 2000 to a low of 55% in 2022 before recovering. Eskom reported an EAF of 69.14% in December 2025, up from 56.57% a year earlier. The Generation Recovery Plan launched after 2023 is credited for the rebound, alongside the return to service of Medupi Unit 4 and Koeberg Unit 1 in 2025.

NTCSA, the new transmission company spun off Eskom

The high-voltage transmission grid is operated by the National Transmission Company South Africa (NTCSA), a subsidiary of Eskom that received its own transmission licence from the regulator NERSA in July 2023.

NTCSA owns and runs the long-distance lines that connect Eskom's power stations to substations across the country, plus the cross-border interconnectors with Botswana, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Eswatini, Lesotho and Namibia.

A five-year transition is planned to make NTCSA fully independent from Eskom and to establish it as the country's Transmission System Operator.

The reform is meant to unlock the South African Wholesale Electricity Market (SAWEM), which is projected to start in 2026 with a limited number of participants.

A distribution network split between Eskom and 165 municipalities

Unlike most countries with a single national distributor, South Africa shares the low-voltage network between Eskom and the municipalities. The split is written into the Constitution, which lists electricity reticulation (low-voltage distribution) as a municipal competence.

In practice, Eskom Distribution serves around 45% of end users directly, mainly large industrial customers, mining clients and rural or peri-urban areas that have never been transferred to a metro.

The remaining 55% of end users are served by municipal distributors. Statistics South Africa reported that redistributors accounted for 44% of all electricity sales in 2024. Of all urban households and small businesses in the country, around 60% receive their electricity through a municipality rather than directly from Eskom.

Around 165 municipalities have a distribution licence. The eight metropolitan municipalities (Johannesburg, Cape Town, Tshwane, eThekwini, Ekurhuleni, Nelson Mandela Bay, Buffalo City and Mangaung) concentrate most of the population and the most active outage portals. Beyond the metros, secondary cities such as Polokwane, Mbombela, Sol Plaatje (Kimberley), Msunduzi (Pietermaritzburg), Stellenbosch, Drakenstein (Paarl), George and Knysna also run their own electricity departments.

Financial tensions between Eskom and municipal distributors have grown sharply in recent years. In March 2026, Eskom announced legal action to disconnect 14 municipalities owing a combined R110 billion, around USD 6.5 billion. Tariffs for direct Eskom customers rose by 8.76% in 2026, while the bulk price charged to municipalities rose by around 9%.

The eight metropolitan distributors

Each of the eight metropolitan municipalities operates its own electricity department or municipal entity, with its own outage portal, fault line and load shedding schedule. The largest, City Power, distributes electricity in Johannesburg and took over Soweto, Sandton, Orange Farm, Diepsloot and other Eskom-supplied areas in 2022.

• City Power (City of Johannesburg) covers Johannesburg, Soweto, Sandton, Orange Farm and surrounding areas. It is a municipal entity 100% owned by the city, with seven service regions: Lenasia, Bryanston, Hursthill, Reuven, Siemert Road, Midrand, Roodepoort and Alexandra.
• City of Cape Town Electricity Services is the municipal department that distributes power across the Cape Town metro. The City has been the most active among metros in procuring electricity from independent power producers to reduce its reliance on Eskom during load shedding.
• City of Tshwane Electricity covers Pretoria and the surrounding districts. Its real-time outage portal at powerfailure.tshwane.gov.za is one of the most consulted in the country.
• eThekwini Electricity distributes electricity across Durban and the eThekwini metro in KwaZulu-Natal. It was the first South African metro to secure ministerial approval to buy significant capacity directly from independent power producers.
• Ekurhuleni Energy operates on the East Rand of Gauteng, covering Kempton Park, Boksburg, Benoni, Germiston, Springs and Tembisa.
• Nelson Mandela Bay Electricity serves Gqeberha (Port Elizabeth), Uitenhage and Despatch in the Eastern Cape.
• Buffalo City Electricity covers East London, Mdantsane and King William's Town in the Eastern Cape.
• Centlec is the entity that distributes electricity for Mangaung, the metro covering Bloemfontein, Botshabelo and Thaba Nchu in the Free State.

These eight metros account for around 42% of the South African population and 60% of national economic activity, which makes their distribution networks the most heavily monitored in the country.

NERSA, the regulator, and SAWEM, the wholesale market opening in 2026

The National Energy Regulator of South Africa (NERSA) is the independent body that licenses generators, transmission operators and distributors, sets the wholesale and retail electricity tariffs each year, and arbitrates disputes between Eskom and municipal distributors.

Every annual tariff change announced by Eskom must be reviewed and approved by NERSA after public consultation.

The Electricity Regulation Amendment Act of 2024, in force since January 2025, is the legal foundation for the South African Wholesale Electricity Market (SAWEM). It marks the end of Eskom's single-buyer model and the beginning of a competitive, multi-market structure where independent power producers, traders and large customers will be able to transact on transparent rules.

A shadow market phase was planned for late 2025 and early 2026 to allow participants to test systems before full launch.

Independent power producers have been growing fast since 2022, when the licensing threshold for embedded generation was removed. In February 2026, non-Eskom electricity generation (mostly wind and solar) was up 20.4% year-over-year. The IRP 2025 plans for around 105 000 MW of new capacity by 2039, with investments totalling R2.2 trillion.

Load shedding, the rolling blackouts that started in 2007

Load shedding is the controlled, rotating disconnection of areas of the grid used by Eskom and municipalities to balance supply and demand when generation is short. The country has lived through repeated waves of load shedding since 2007, with 2022 and 2023 the most severe years on record. Stages run from 1 to 8, each removing an additional 1 000 MW of demand from the system, in two-hour or four-hour blocks per area.

The situation improved sharply in 2024 and 2025. As of late April 2026, South Africa had recorded 341 consecutive days without load shedding, only 26 hours of cuts were imposed in April and May 2025 combined, and the official Winter Outlook 2026 projected no load shedding through August 2026 in its base case.

Cuts remain possible under the high-risk scenario if unplanned breakdowns exceed 16 000 MW. For a closer look at the operational side and how to report a suspected load shedding event in your area, see the load shedding page.

Why unplanned outages still hit the grid

Beyond load shedding, several other causes drive unplanned outages on the network. They explain most of the reports submitted on GeoBlackout.

Cable theft and vandalism

Theft of copper cabling, substation equipment and mini-substation components is one of the leading causes of localised outages, especially around Johannesburg, Ekurhuleni and the inner suburbs of Cape Town and Durban. City Power has repeatedly reported losing several mini-substations a week to theft and vandalism. Restoration often takes longer than a technical fault because equipment has to be replaced rather than simply re-energised.

Network overloads and illegal connections

In several townships and informal settlements, Eskom and municipal distributors implement a measure called load reduction, distinct from load shedding. It cuts power during peak hours on feeders overloaded by illegal connections, to protect transformers from destruction.

Eskom is rolling out 577 347 smart meters and removing feeders from load reduction as part of a programme due to finish in 2027. The Northern Cape and Western Cape were the first provinces to be fully cleared.

Storms, heavy rains and lightning

The Highveld summer storm season (October to March) brings intense lightning over Gauteng, Mpumalanga and the Free State, with strikes regularly tripping substations and overhead lines. The eastern coast, from KwaZulu-Natal to the Garden Route, is exposed to coastal storms and the occasional cut-off low driving prolonged outages.

Planned maintenance and grid upgrades

Eskom's Generation Recovery Plan increased planned maintenance from an average of 4 700 MW in 2023 to a peak of around 8 000 MW and an annual average of 5 400 MW in financial year 2026.

Local distributors also schedule outages on their own networks for substation upgrades, cable replacement and connection works. Most metros publish a list of planned outages on their websites.

How to report an outage to the right operator

The right operator to contact depends on who supplies your address. In broad terms, residents of metropolitan suburbs report to their city distributor, while customers in rural areas, smaller towns and some peri-urban zones report directly to Eskom.

• Eskom direct customers can report a fault on the MyEskom Customer App, on the Eskom Alfred chatbot, by calling 08600 37566, or by SMS to 35328.
• City Power (Johannesburg) operates a 24/7 call centre on 011 490 7484, with fault reporting via SMS, WhatsApp and the Find & Fix portal.
• City of Cape Town runs the Service Request system on 0860 103 089 and via the e-Services portal.
• City of Tshwane takes fault reports on 012 358 9999 and publishes them on the public outage map at powerfailure.tshwane.gov.za.
• eThekwini Electricity can be reached on 080 13 13 111 and lists active faults on webfaults.durban.gov.za.

Reporting an outage on GeoBlackout adds your address to the community map. The map helps confirm whether neighbours are affected, whether a single street is down or whether a wider area is impacted by a substation fault. It does not replace a fault report to the operator but it gives a quick view of the scale of the problem before calling support.

How South African mobile and fibre networks survive power cuts

Years of load shedding forced South African internet and mobile operators to invest heavily in backup power. Mobile networks Vodacom, MTN, Cell C and Telkom have rolled out battery backups, generators and solar systems on tens of thousands of sites.

Fibre network operators Vumatel, Openserve and Frogfoot run UPS systems on their main equipment, although fibre nodes in the street still go down when the local power is off for long enough.

When the lights go out, the typical sequence is: customer routers fail first (no UPS at home), then street fibre cabinets after a few hours, then mobile cell sites once their batteries run out (typically four to twelve hours). For a real-time view of internet outages reported by users, see the related provider pages above.

Load shedding and South African mobile and fibre networks