How often did South African households lose power in 2025?
In 2025, 31.0% of South African households with mains electricity reported a power interruption in the seven days before their survey interview. That was down from 92.1% in 2023. The national figure hid a wide gap in 2025. 45.5% reported an interruption in Mpumalanga, compared with 11.6% in the Western Cape. Stats SA General Household Survey 2025, Figures 11.6–11.7, page 47
By Freepaid · Published
Where households reported interruptions
Stats SA asked about scheduled load shedding and unscheduled outages together. Freepaid calculated the share reporting at least one day of interruptions by subtracting the share that reported none from 100%. The daily column comes directly from the survey.
| Province | At least one day of interruptions | Interruptions every day |
|---|---|---|
| Eastern Cape | 21.1% | 1.3% |
| Free State | 21.3% | 3.7% |
| Gauteng | 38.8% | 3.0% |
| KwaZulu-Natal | 38.4% | 3.9% |
| Limpopo | 19.7% | 6.6% |
| Mpumalanga | 45.5% | 13.2% |
| North West | 31.3% | 2.3% |
| Northern Cape | 19.8% | 0.6% |
| Western Cape | 11.6% | 0.7% |
| South Africa | 31.0% | 3.8% |
The share reporting any interruption was almost the same in Limpopo and the Northern Cape, at 19.7% and 19.8%. The daily figures were further apart. 6.6% in Limpopo reported interruptions on all seven days, compared with 0.6% in the Northern Cape. The two columns distinguish how widely interruptions were reported from how often households faced them. Stats SA General Household Survey 2025, Figure 11.7, page 47
Daily interruptions fell faster
Across South Africa, the share reporting at least one day of interruptions fell from 92.1% in 2023 to 35.9% in 2024 and 31.0% in 2025. Over the same period, the share reporting interruptions every day fell from 77.5% to 21.0% and then to 3.8%. The two measures answer different questions. In 2025, most households who reported a problem had it on fewer than seven days. Stats SA General Household Survey 2025, Figure 11.6, page 47
What the survey measures
The survey uses the seven days before each interview. Households without mains electricity skip the question. A day counts whether the interruption lasted minutes or hours, and a household may have had more than one interruption that day. The figures give the share of households reporting interruptions during their survey week. They do not give the total hours of electricity lost or split the results between scheduled and unscheduled interruptions. Stats SA GHS 2025 metadata, ENG8, page 81, via UCT DataFirst
Sources
Statistics South Africa’s General Household Survey 2025 supplies the national comparison and the provincial breakdown. Stats SA General Household Survey 2025, Figures 11.6–11.7, page 47 · Copy of the Stats SA report via UCT DataFirst
Last source check · 3 November 2026.