A new publicly available dataset reveals stark disparities in grid reliability across South Africa’s municipalities — with the average power outage lasting under 2 hours in some areas and exceeding 24 hours in others.
The data, drawn from real-time telemetry across a national network of solar and battery installations, is published in the Wetility 2025 Energy Resilience Report. An interactive lookup tool launched today at wetility.energy/outages allows anyone to search their municipality and view a detailed outage profile, including average duration, monthly trends and how their area compares to the national average.
The release follows national findings published on 28 March, which showed that South African households experienced 6 to 9 grid outages per month in 2025 and that over 91,000 unique outages were recorded — despite more than 300 consecutive days without load shedding.
Today’s municipality-level data reveals how unevenly that burden falls.
The Gap Between National Progress and Local Reality
At a national level, the narrative around South Africa’s power system has been one of recovery. Eskom has gone more than 300 days without load shedding, and generation performance has improved markedly. But the municipality-level data suggests that for many households, the lived experience of unreliable power has not changed.
The dataset covers 57+ municipalities across all nine provinces, measuring grid outages at the point of delivery — capturing failures across the full chain of generation, transmission and distribution. The national average outage duration was 12.1 hours. But the range around that average is enormous.
Key findings at the municipality level include:
City of Tshwane: Average outage duration of 15.6 hours. 69.5% of all outages lasted longer than 8 hours.
City of Johannesburg: Over 10,800 outage events recorded in 2025 — the highest of any municipality in the dataset.
Waterberg District (Limpopo): Nearly 80% of outages exceeded 8 hours, with an average duration of 16.4 hours — among the longest in the country.
iLembe District (KwaZulu-Natal): 82.9% of outages resolved within 2 hours, with an average duration of just 2.0 hours.
Amajuba District (KwaZulu-Natal): Average outage lasted 18.6 hours, with 82.7% exceeding 8 hours.
What the Pattern Suggests
The findings suggest that, even as national generation performance improved, many households continued to experience localised reliability challenges. The pattern is consistent with known distribution-side pressures, including ageing infrastructure, maintenance backlogs, theft, vandalism and equipment failure.
“This data makes clear that the conversation about grid reliability cannot be a national one alone,” said Franta Pour, Chief Commercial Officer at Wetility. “Many municipalities are operating under significant pressure — from ageing infrastructure and cable theft to revenue collection constraints — and that reality is reflected in the variability we see. What this dataset provides is visibility: a way for municipalities, businesses and households to better understand local conditions and make more informed decisions.”
The variation also raises questions about equity. A household in iLembe District and one in Waterberg face fundamentally different experiences, despite being part of the same national electricity system.
Pour noted that the gap between best- and worst-performing municipalities is significant: “We’re not looking at marginal differences. In some areas, outages are resolved relatively quickly, while in others they can persist for extended periods. Where you live has a material impact on reliability and for most households, that reality has historically not been visible.”
What This Means for Consumers
The data helps explain a trend that has puzzled parts of the energy sector: why demand for solar and battery systems has remained strong even as load shedding has dropped to zero. For households experiencing 6 to 9 unplanned outages per month — many lasting half a day or more — the driver is no longer scheduled cuts. It is unpredictability.
At the same time, electricity tariffs continue to rise. The combination of rising costs and unreliable supply means the question for many households is no longer whether to explore alternatives, but what capacity they need based on the outage profile in their area.
The municipality lookup tool is designed to support that decision. It is free, requires no registration and is publicly accessible at wetility.energy/outages.