City Power: areas that will be without electricity next week
Checking the electricity power meter with a candle in cold winter days while there is a power outage. Picture: iStock
City Power has announced multiple planned power interruptions across Johannesburg for next week, affecting thousands of customers in four major regions as the utility conducts essential network maintenance work.
The most extensive outages are scheduled for Tuesday, 22 July 2025, with three separate interruptions planned across different areas of the city.
An additional outage is planned for Monday, 21 July 2025, in the Midrand area.
Monday power outage in Beaulieu
Residents and businesses in Beaulieu will experience an eight-hour power interruption on Monday, 21 July 2025.
The outage at Beaulieu Switching Station will affect all streets in the area from 9am until 5pm.
The Midrand Service Delivery Centre in Region A will oversee the maintenance work.
City Power stated that 'the interruption is necessary to do essential maintenance work on our network, which is part of our programme of constantly striving to provide a better service.'
ALSO READ: City Power suspends services amid staff being held hostage
Tuesday's multiple outages
The Johannesburg CBD will experience significant disruption on Tuesday, with the CBD Switching Station requiring maintenance from 9am until 5pm.
The outage will impact several key commercial areas, including:
Exchange,
Market,
Bond,
Diagonal,
Grand Central, and
part of Old Pretoria Road.
The Midrand Service Delivery Centre will also manage this interruption, which forms part of the utility's ongoing network improvement programme.
ALSO READ: City Power takes over electricity billing: Here's what this means for you
Ennerdale and surrounding areas
Residents in Ennerdale and surrounding areas will face an extended eight-hour outage on Tuesday, starting earlier at 8am and concluding at 4pm.
The Ennerdale Substation maintenance will affect multiple areas, including:
Lawley 1,
Ennerdale Extensions 1, 3, 5, 9, 6 and 14,
Mid-Ennerdale,
Ennerdale CBD, and
part of Ennerdale Extension 8.
The Lenasia Service Delivery Centre in Region G will coordinate this maintenance work.
Bryanston and northern suburbs
The northern suburbs will not be exempt from Tuesday's maintenance schedule, with the Khanyisa Substation requiring work from 9am until 5pm.
The outage will impact several upmarket areas including:
Bryanston,
Bryanston Extensions 8, 40, 64, 75, and 95,
Cowdray Park Extension 1,
Hurlingham Extension 5, and
Lyme Park.
The Randburg Service Delivery Centre in Region B will oversee this maintenance operation.
ALSO READ: How to read and upload your meter readings — and will it save you money?
Safety warnings and service commitment
City Power has emphasised safety precautions for all affected customers.
The utility warned that 'as the supply may be restored at any time, customers are urged to always treat their electricity supply points as live.'
The company acknowledged the inconvenience these outages would cause.
'City Power regrets any inconvenience that may be caused by this interruption,' the utility stated in its notifications to customers.
City Power emphasised that all interruptions stem from essential maintenance work designed to improve service delivery.
The utility described the maintenance as 'part of our programme of constantly striving to provide a better service.'
READ NEXT: WATCH: What happened when City Power came to remove illegal connection in Crown informal settlements
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Citizen
3 days ago
- The Citizen
City Power: areas that will be without electricity next week
City Power has emphasised safety precautions for all affected customers. Checking the electricity power meter with a candle in cold winter days while there is a power outage. Picture: iStock City Power has announced multiple planned power interruptions across Johannesburg for next week, affecting thousands of customers in four major regions as the utility conducts essential network maintenance work. The most extensive outages are scheduled for Tuesday, 22 July 2025, with three separate interruptions planned across different areas of the city. An additional outage is planned for Monday, 21 July 2025, in the Midrand area. Monday power outage in Beaulieu Residents and businesses in Beaulieu will experience an eight-hour power interruption on Monday, 21 July 2025. The outage at Beaulieu Switching Station will affect all streets in the area from 9am until 5pm. The Midrand Service Delivery Centre in Region A will oversee the maintenance work. City Power stated that 'the interruption is necessary to do essential maintenance work on our network, which is part of our programme of constantly striving to provide a better service.' ALSO READ: City Power suspends services amid staff being held hostage Tuesday's multiple outages The Johannesburg CBD will experience significant disruption on Tuesday, with the CBD Switching Station requiring maintenance from 9am until 5pm. The outage will impact several key commercial areas, including: Exchange, Market, Bond, Diagonal, Grand Central, and part of Old Pretoria Road. The Midrand Service Delivery Centre will also manage this interruption, which forms part of the utility's ongoing network improvement programme. ALSO READ: City Power takes over electricity billing: Here's what this means for you Ennerdale and surrounding areas Residents in Ennerdale and surrounding areas will face an extended eight-hour outage on Tuesday, starting earlier at 8am and concluding at 4pm. The Ennerdale Substation maintenance will affect multiple areas, including: Lawley 1, Ennerdale Extensions 1, 3, 5, 9, 6 and 14, Mid-Ennerdale, Ennerdale CBD, and part of Ennerdale Extension 8. The Lenasia Service Delivery Centre in Region G will coordinate this maintenance work. Bryanston and northern suburbs The northern suburbs will not be exempt from Tuesday's maintenance schedule, with the Khanyisa Substation requiring work from 9am until 5pm. The outage will impact several upmarket areas including: Bryanston, Bryanston Extensions 8, 40, 64, 75, and 95, Cowdray Park Extension 1, Hurlingham Extension 5, and Lyme Park. The Randburg Service Delivery Centre in Region B will oversee this maintenance operation. ALSO READ: How to read and upload your meter readings — and will it save you money? Safety warnings and service commitment City Power has emphasised safety precautions for all affected customers. The utility warned that 'as the supply may be restored at any time, customers are urged to always treat their electricity supply points as live.' The company acknowledged the inconvenience these outages would cause. 'City Power regrets any inconvenience that may be caused by this interruption,' the utility stated in its notifications to customers. City Power emphasised that all interruptions stem from essential maintenance work designed to improve service delivery. The utility described the maintenance as 'part of our programme of constantly striving to provide a better service.' READ NEXT: WATCH: What happened when City Power came to remove illegal connection in Crown informal settlements
Daily Maverick
6 days ago
- Daily Maverick
Joburg power crisis — almost 100,000 reported outages in 9 months, 5,126 very serious
Africa's powerhouse city is going back to the Dark Ages after decades of post-apartheid electrification gains. A Johannesburg power data investigation by Daily Maverick has found a total of 97,715 reported power outages in nine months – with more than 5,126 serious enough to take out entire suburbs at once. This is the first independent attempt to put a number on the scale of Johannesburg's power crisis placing South Africa's economic powerhouse at risk. We began tabulating quarterly reports from City Power from July 2024 to the end of March 2025. The key finding: serious high-voltage and medium-voltage outages are getting worse as the grid reaches its end of life. As we reported the impact of outages on people's lives, a few trends became clear: citizens and residents are turning to old forms of energy such as paraffin and petrol because solar is still too expensive for most. Business margins of the vital small and medium-sized hustle businesses so important to national growth are seeing their margins chopped because they must buy expensive inverters and generators to keep going. Many are shutting shop, laying off people or not expanding because they can't afford to hire more staff even where there is demand. Kabelo, a resident and a student at The Finishing College in Braamfontein who runs a business in Vlakfontein, said: 'The power outages are very bad, hey, because literally every time it starts raining, or it rains, or it gets a little windy, the lights go. They're gone for days. It's not a few hours – it's four to six days at a time. Food rots and there's no water to bathe. It's stressful for everybody. Most houses here have gas stoves, or primer stoves that use paraffin, and others light a fire to boil water to bathe or to cook. It's really hard. Imagine getting up in the morning to go and look for wood for a fire. As a student, it's bad, because you have to do schoolwork. 'Without WiFi the (mobile phone) towers go down and the network is bad. I can't complete my assignments, so I have to do everything there in Braamfontein, and catch late transport back home again.' This city-level energy crisis emerges as Electricity Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa finally gets a grip on national load shedding. The impact of the city's outages is significant because Johannesburg is still responsible for 16% of national GDP. The chart shows that from July 2024 to the end of March 2025 there were 97,715 reported outages – the absolute total may be lower because some might be reported more than once. Even half that number would be cripplingly high. Daily Maverick added a second level of data extraction from municipal distributor City Power's social media posts and found that from December 2024 to the end of February 2025 there were 5,126 outages serious enough for the utility to report publicly. It can't report all outages because there are too many. The mass of outages are so-called low-voltage outages and affect individual homes or a single street or a few properties. The medium-voltage outages are increasing: these affect an entire suburb or even many suburbs at once. These are caused by faults in larger powerlines or mini substations, distributors or transformer substations that supply 20 to 30 households or more. These are now an everyday standard across Johannesburg and are disempowering residents from the north to the south and east to west of the city. The age of the grid and the general decline are clear when you look at how outages are spread fairly evenly across the different distributing centres: Alexandra, Hursthill, Inner City, Lenasia, Midrand, Randburg, Reuven and Roodepoort. Soweto and other smaller parts of Johannesburg are serviced by Eskom and experience as many outages. As the utility – which is R15-billion in overdraft carried by the City, with many more billions in debt – runs out of cash, it can't hold stock and must buy on demand. This means outages last longer. South Africa's leading energy expert, Chris Yelland of EE Publishers, said municipal outages are getting longer. '(The outages) are exceptionally high by global standards,' he said. As we hit the city to report, many people said that multi-day or full-day outages are common now. 'City Power is particularly hard hit because it's in a dire financial state. If you don't have money, you can't carry spares.' Yelland said suppliers hesitated to do business with Johannesburg's electricity utility because it didn't pay efficiently. He said City Power was extending terms to 30, 60, 90 or even 120 days' credit and now suppliers wanted bank guarantees first. All of this extended outage times. 'We're talking about mini-transformers, cables, switch-gear, mini substations, electricity metering equipment…' The small and medium-sized suppliers couldn't fund supplies on 120-day credit lines. 'It's on the verge of a tipping point,' said Yelland who explained that because municipalities make up 50% of Eskom's sales, their non-payments were existential. Because people can't afford their bills, debt owed by municipalities to Eskom is growing at R3-billion a month and has now overshot a total of R100-billion. This in turn threatens Eskom's viability, Ramokgopa said when he announced a deal for City Power to pay off old debt owed to Eskom over four years. City Power also owes Eskom R3.2-billion, according to a recent settlement mediated by the minister, which will be paid off over four years. City Power: Soaring outages are not a crisis – yet Question: The Q3 report from City Power shows that in three months there were 29,084 low-voltage outages, 1,335 medium-voltage outages and 86 high-voltage outages between January and March 2025. This builds on a picture of massive outages across the city that are largely unrecognised in the public discourse. Would you classify this as a crisis? If not, could you explain why not? Answer: The figures reflect significant pressure on the electricity network. However, City Power does not classify the situation as a crisis. This is because a single outage may affect multiple customers who each log the fault separately, and sometimes repeatedly. In line with Nersa regulations, each logged call must be reported individually, even if it relates to the same high number of outage calls results from a range of factors, including consumer-related faults, equipment failures, overloads and incidents caused by third parties. Ageing infrastructure – especially in areas like Roodepoort, Randburg, Hursthill, the Inner City and Reuven – also contributes to system failures. While City Power prioritises replacing old infrastructure with advanced technology during repairs, progress is constrained by a R40-billion infrastructure backlog and limited funding (for example, only R1.2-billion allocated last year).Severe weather at the start of the year compounded the problem. Heavy rain, flooding and uprooted trees caused widespread damage, especially to underground cables. Moisture intrusion led to insulation failures and hampered testing and repair efforts. Vandalism of mini substations made things worse under these conditions. For example, in Roodepoort, a mini substation exploded after water damage and had to be replaced. Q: Has City Power undertaken impact studies on how this affects residents and businesses? A: Yes. City Power conducts regular service-level impact assessments aligned with the Joburg IDP. These inform initiatives like Energy Relief Packages and the Just Energy Transition Plan. Our 2025 Customer Satisfaction Baseline Survey confirmed a link between outages and increased household spending on alternative energy. We also track plant outages and infrastructure performance daily and conduct impact assessments to guide future investment. Q: Our reporting shows that communities across geographic and economic lines are turning to costly and risky alternatives like paraffin and generators. What's your view? A: We recognise the safety and cost concerns associated with these alternatives. They are neither ideal nor sustainable. City Power is working to reduce this dependence by expanding embedded generation, managing demand and rolling out smart meters under our Just Energy Transition Strategy. Q: Given the city's high consultancy spend (as reported in News24), what does the medium-term picture look like? A: The consultancy spend supports the need for specialised skills to modernise Johannesburg's energy system. The medium-term outlook includes stabilising the grid through capital investment, digitalisation of asset management and integrating independent power producers. These efforts are essential, not superficial. Q: Is City Power struggling to access spare parts due to high levels of debt? A: Nonpayment for electricity impacts our ability to fund infrastructure and maintain stock of spares. While we've experienced procurement delays, improved supply chain controls and vendor payment acceleration have helped. We're also seeing positive results from better meter reading and audit systems. Q: A Daily Maverick count based on City Power's social media suggests far fewer outages than in your reports. Why the discrepancy? A: Our social media only reports major high-voltage and medium-voltage outages for public awareness. Most outages (low voltage) are recorded internally via our Outage Management System, SCADA, and call centre logs. Daily internal reports track all MV outages across our Service Delivery Centres. Real-time updates are also shared via WhatsApp groups, ward councillors and social media, but these represent only a portion of total outages. DM This investigation was produced with the support of the SA | AJP, an initiative of the Henry Nxumalo Foundation funded by the European Union. This article does not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union.
The Citizen
24-06-2025
- The Citizen
Top 10 stories of the day: City Power explains billing differences
Here's your daily news update for Tuesday, 24 June 2025: An easy-to-read selection of our top stories. News today includes City Power CEO Tshifularo Mashava has explained a phenomenon in which customers reload their prepaid electricity meters, only for the power utility to charge them a fixed fee of about 50% of their initial amount. Meanwhile, the economy shed jobs again in the first quarter of 2025, with unemployment also worse than a year ago, as employment decreased by 95 000 or -0.9% between March 2024 and March 2025, as full-time as well as part-time employment decreased. Furthermore, the new-look Springbok playing jersey for the 2025 season has been unveiled. Weather tomorrow: 25 June 2025 Residents of the Western Cape, Northern Cape and Free State must brace themselves for an intense cold front with possible heavy rainfall and light snowfall. Meanwhile, extremely high fire danger conditions are also forecast over places in the Northern Cape, and Free State, as well as the North West. Full weather forecast here. Stay up to date with The Citizen – More News, Your Way. City Power explains why it charges some customers more than others City Power CEO Tshifularo Mashava has explained a phenomenon in which customers reload their prepaid electricity meters, only for the power utility to charge them a fixed fee of about 50% of their initial amount. This comes amid complaints about the high cost of units beyond the R200 surcharge on prepaid electricity for residential customers, introduced last year. The Joburg council proposed increasing the prepaid electricity surcharge in May 2025. Picture: X/@RekordNewspaper Mashava explained in a media briefing on Tuesday why the power utility has been charging some customers more than others. CONTINUE READING: City Power explains why it charges some customers more than others Eastern Cape floods: Here's how much victims will be given to rebuild their homes The national Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (Cogta) says funds for building materials will be provided to residents whose homes were damaged during the recent devastating floods in the Eastern Cape. The floods, which struck various areas in the province earlier this month, claimed the lives of at least 100 people and displaced many families. Flooded roads after heavy rains fell in Gqeberha on 10 June 2025. Picture: Gallo Images/Lulama Zenzile A national state of disaster was declared in response to the widespread destruction. CONTINUE READING: Eastern Cape floods: Here's how much victims will be given to rebuild their homes Economy sheds jobs again in first quarter, unemployment worse than year ago The economy shed jobs again in the first quarter of 2025, with unemployment also worse than a year ago, as employment decreased by 95 000 or -0.9% between March 2024 and March 2025, as full-time as well as part-time employment decreased. According to Statistics SA, its Quarterly Employment Statistics for the first quarter of the year show that total employment decreased by 74 000 or -0.7% compared to the fourth quarter of 2024, from 10 653 000 in December 2024 to 10 579 000 in March 2025. Picture: iStock This was due to decreases in trade that shed 52 000 jobs (-2.2%), community services that shed 17 000 jobs (0.6%), mining that shed 4 000 jobs (-0.9%), business services that shed 1 000 jobs (0.0%), construction that also shed 1 000 jobs (-0.2%) and electricity that also shed 1 000 jobs (-1.6%). CONTINUE READING: Economy sheds jobs again in first quarter, unemployment worse than year ago Shivambu-MK spat: 'I am willing to take a drug test,' says Nhlamulo Ndhlela Umkhonto weSizwe (MK) party spokesperson Nhlamulo Ndhlela says he is willing to take a drug test to prove that he is not a drug addict. This comes after the party's former secretary-general, Floyd Shivambu, told eNCA on Monday that Ndhlela is always high on drugs and alcohol. uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) party national spokesperson Nhlamulo Ndhlela. Picture: X Shivambu also described Ndhlela as a 'scoundrel', a 'fool' and an 'imbecile' who is part of the people who are leading a smear campaign against him. CONTINUE READING: Shivambu-MK spat: 'I am willing to take a drug test,' says Nhlamulo Ndhlela PICTURES: New-look Bok jerseys unveiled, including special '95 edition The new-look Springbok playing jersey for the 2025 season has been unveiled. And, for hard-core Bok fans, apparel partner Nike have released a jersey commemorating the 30th anniversary of the Springboks winning the 1995 Rugby World Cup. Jesse Kriel during a recent Bok training session. Picture: Daniel Hlongwane/Gallo Images The release of a heritage jersey recreates the one worn by the Boks in the 15-12 victory over New Zealand at Ellis Park in 1995, while the new team playing jersey incorporates elements of the King Protea in a striking collar design. CONTINUE READING: PICTURES: New-look Bok jerseys unveiled, including special '95 edition Here are five more stories of the day: Yesterday's News recap READ HERE: 24-year-olds in debt | Ramaphosa calls for Israel-Iran dialogue | Get to know Pirates' new coach
