• City Power is dealing with scores of unplanned outages across Johannesburg as Winter demand pushes its systems and staff to the limit.
• Residents in Alexandra have taken to the streets in protest as their electricity has been off sporadically for several days.
• As Winter demand bites City Power infrastructure, Johannesburg residents should expect more unplanned outages.

Just a day after imposing load reduction across the City of Johannesburg in order to deal with what it says is a critically constrained system, Johannesburg’s electricity infrastructure company City Power has been dealing with unplanned outages across the city, which have been mounting for several days.

The company’s maintenance teams are severely constrained as the city’s infrastructure buckles under the winter demand, which it was not prepared to handle as Eskom’s loadshedding remains suspended.

In the last 48 hours, City Power has been dealing with outages in distribution zones including Inner City, Hursthill, Lenasia, Reuven, Randburg, Ruimsig, Alexandra, Midrand, Roodepoort, and Soweto. These zones supply electricity to millions of people.

Often the power will be restored only for the different substations in the region to undergo power outages again.

Alexandra, in particular, has been dealing with sweeping power outages, as one substation is restored, another will suffer an outage. This has been ongoing for several days, to the point that City Power issued an apology to Alexandra residents specifically.

The area is also marked for rolling load reduction, which sees the power off in the mornings and in the evenings, similar to loadshedding.

“City Power would like to apologise to residents following the outages that have gripped the township alongside the load reduction that is being implemented to save the system,” it said in a post on X.

“The electricity system in Alexandra is in critical state due to overloading caused by high demand.”

The Alexandra substation has now undergone emergency isolation, and many of the regions substations were switched off until repairs in the substation were complete. Residents took to the streets this morning and burned tyres to protest the lack of service delivery of electricity, especially during a particularly cold week, as per News24.

It may be common knowledge that Winter happens every year. In South Africa, the temperature drops the sharpest in June and July. Eskom prepared adequately for the Winter months ahead of time, even notifying South Africans that increased demand could cause loadshedding. City Power seemingly did not.

[Image – Photo by Andrey Metelev on Unsplash]