The end of load shedding hasn’t fixed South Africa’s power problem

A new interactive report by residential solar energy specialist Wetility shows clear disparities in the reliable supply of electricity across South Africa’s municipalities, with outages lasting about two hours in some areas and more than 18 hours in others.

The data demonstrates that South Africa’s energy infrastructure has issues at multiple levels, meaning solving the core generation issue alone – which Eskom appears to have done with the end of load shedding – does not guarantee stable power supply for consumers and businesses.

“This data makes clear that the conversation about grid reliability cannot be a national one alone. 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,” said Wetility chief commercial officer Franta Pour.

“What this dataset provides is … a way for municipalities, businesses and households to better understand local conditions and make more informed decisions.”

Wetility used telemetry data from its national network of solar and battery installations to develop an interactive lookup tool that allows the public to search their municipality and view a detailed outage profile. Metrics available for analysis include average outage duration, monthly trends and how different areas compare.

While the data is insightful, only a reported “57-plus” of South Africa’s 257 municipalities are included in the analysis. Of those represented, the number of households with solar installations in those municipalities is not disclosed. The definition of an outage is also not clarified, with the difference between a household mains trip and a street-wide transformer failure not specified, for example.

Counternarrative

Still, the data Wetility’s tool provides presents a counternarrative regarding South Africa’s energy trajectory. The national power story in 2025 was one of recovery. Eskom strung together more than 300 consecutive days without load shedding, generation availability climbed and the political conversation began to shift from crisis management to long-term reform. Wetility’s report suggests the recovery has been uneven to the point of being invisible for many households.

The report shows that the average grid outage in South Africa lasted 12.1 hours in 2025. But the spread around it is more revealing: the average outage duration ranges from roughly two hours in iLembe district (around Ballito) in KwaZulu-Natal to 18.6 hours in Amajuba district, also in KZN, where the biggest commercial centre is Newcastle.

Read: Theft and power cuts hammer SA telecoms operators

At the worst end of the dataset, Amajuba district recorded an average outage duration of 18.6 hours, with 82.7% of these exceeding eight hours. Waterberg district in Limpopo – home to Eskom’s 4.8GW Medupi power station – recorded an average outage of 16.4 hours, with nearly 80% of outages lasting longer than eight hours. In short, one of the country’s largest generation facilities sits in a district where households routinely lose power for the better part of a day.

Metros are not insulated from the trend. The City of Tshwane, for example, recorded an average outage duration of 15.6 hours, with 69.5% of outages running longer than eight hours.

The potential skew in Wetility’s data set is not just from the fact that fewer than 25% of South African municipalities are represented. The high cost of solar panels means their distribution tends to skew towards higher-income areas, meaning the data potentially fails to represent a broad enough sample.

Even so, the insights Wetility has drawn from its data can be corroborated by reports from the telecommunications sector. Earlier this month, TechCentral reported that despite an end to load shedding, mobile operators are still being forced to redirect capex budgeted for network expansion towards power resilience because power cuts remain an everyday occurrence across large parts of South Africa.

Read: Setback for South Africa’s electricity market reform

“Telecoms networks require constant power to operate and our members report burning more diesel now due to power outages and vandalism, because wherever there are power outages vandalism also increases,” ACT CEO Nomvuyiso Batyi said.  – © 2026 NewsCentral Media