• Johannesburg’s City Power has been struggling to address widespread outages due to the inclement weather.
• Days of heavy rains have caused a number of outages across Johannesburg infrastructure points.
• City Power says it has now fully staffed its operational teams in order to address outages faster.

A week of inclement weather has seen Johannesburg’s power distribution firm City Power struggling to keep the lights on. According to the entity, it has seen over 3 000 calls from residents in the last few days, demanding answers for why they don’t have access to electricity.

It said weather such as heavy rains and thunder showers may “strain its electricity network resulting in unplanned outages.”

The rains also affect how long it takes outages to be addressed by City Power technicians. It says via posts on X that “The possibility of inclement weather could affect our response time to outages.”

“As a result repairs and restorations may be delayed.”

It adds that the power system of the largest city in the country remains constrained, and that residents should try and conserve electricity when possible to avoid unplanned outages.

Every year, the heaviest rainfall in Johannesburg takes place in December, January and February according to different data sources.

On Monday, City Power issued a statement saying that much of its backlog from the past week has been cleared and that it now has fully staffed all its technician teams.

“While we acknowledge that some customers are still affected, we have successfully resolved many power interruptions that occurred over the past few days,” it said.

“To address the ongoing challenges, we have brought in additional resources over the weekend, and with the start of the new week, more technicians and contractors who were on break have returned, ensuring that all operational teams are fully staffed.”

However many regions of the city remain without power at the time of writing.

Independent energy expert Tshepo Kgadima told Jacaranda FM on Tuesday that the blame of Johannesburg’s power challenges fall on its government rather than the weather.

“City Power’s outages will go on for a long time. They take electricity users’ money and allocate it to other things instead of maintaining or refurbishing their infrastructure. 

“City Power is a distributor, but its state of distribution is a disaster,” they said.