All eight metros
How often is it off? Who produces our power?
7 of 8
metros lost more electricity than Treasury’s upper norm of 10% in 2024-25.
Official: Audited annual financial statements · Data as of 2024-25 financial year (audited statements) · Next update expected Jan 2027 (2025-26 annual reports) · Last updated
An asterisk marks a figure our automated checks found inconsistent with another official figure. It is shown as reported, explained in a footnote and left out of rankings.
Official: audited annual financial statements · Data as of 2024-25 financial year (audited statements) · Next update expected Jan 2027 (2025-26 annual reports) · Last updated
Electricity a metro buys or generates but never bills: technical losses in the network, theft and faulty meters. Treasury’s norm is 7% to 10%.
32.2%
Only Mangaung stayed within Treasury’s norm of 7% to 10%. Ranked highest loss first. A lower figure is better.
Treasury norm (Circular 71): 7% to 10%. The thin lines on the bars mark it.
Source: each metro’s audited annual financial statements. Each figure links to the page it comes from. Some metros report non-revenue water, which is close to but not the same as distribution losses; the note says so.
Official: each metro’s published notices · Data as of see each notice’s date · Updates: checked daily · Last updated
Planned and unplanned power interruptions each metro announced since 1 Jan 2025, matched to wards by the places they name. Metros publish very differently, so the counts say more about how each metro publishes than about how often the power goes off.
| Metro | Notices | Matched to wards | Latest |
|---|---|---|---|
| Johannesburg | 692 | 498 | 8 Oct 2026 |
| Tshwane | 23 | 23 | 29 Sep 2026 |
| Ekurhuleni | 12 | 7 | 3 Sep 2026 |
| Cape Town | 47 | 42 | 2 Oct 2026 |
| eThekwini | 12 | 8 | 18 Sep 2026 |
| Nelson Mandela Bay | 256 | 107 | 7 Oct 2026 |
| Buffalo City | Buffalo City publishes no outage notices online that we could find. | ||
| Mangaung | 564 | 281 | 8 Oct 2026 |
Places are matched by their Stats SA Census 2011 names, longest name first, with no guessing; a name we cannot match is listed for checking and not linked to a ward. Notices before 1 Jan 2025 are not included. Buffalo City: Buffalo City publishes no outage notices online that we could find. Where a metro publishes no notices, residents can report an outage (community reports, unverified).
6 948 hours in 2023, against 1 656 hours in 2024. It last happened on 26 Mar 2024, by the CSIR’s count.
Independent source: CSIR Energy Centre, Utility-scale power generation statistics in South Africa 2024, page 69. The CSIR estimates these from Eskom’s announcements; not an official statistic, and not used in our rankings. The report. Data as of 2024 (latest annual report) · Updates: the CSIR publishes once a year.
