Thousands of households, businesses and essential services across southern and western Johannesburg were left without electricity on Thursday after a critical network failure at City Power’s Orlando Switching Station triggered widespread outages across three service delivery centres.
The power utility has apologised to affected customers, saying it understands the disruption caused and has mobilised all available technical resources to restore electricity as safely and quickly as possible.
The outage began in the early hours of Thursday morning when a pole mounted transformer at Eikenhof suffered a catastrophic failure and caught fire. The incident caused the Orlando Switching Station to trip, interrupting the electricity supply to several areas.
City Power’s operators initially managed to restore the first interruption. However, a secondary fault later developed on one of the Eikenhof breakers supplying the Orlando Switching Station, leading to a wider network failure that continues to affect large parts of Johannesburg.
City Power spokesperson Isaac Mangena said teams remain on site working around the clock to determine the cause of the fault before repairs can begin.
“Our operators, protection teams and technical specialists are conducting comprehensive investigations to determine the exact cause of the secondary fault and assess the extent of the damage. Restoring electricity safely while protecting the integrity of the network remains our highest priority,” said Mangena.
The Orlando Switching Station is one of City Power’s key electricity distribution facilities, supplying several substations that feed large parts of southern and western Johannesburg. As a result, the failure had a cascading effect across multiple substations and service areas.
Customers supplied through the Reuven, Lenasia and Hursthill Service Delivery Centres remain among those affected.
Areas impacted under the Reuven Service Delivery Centre include Kibler Park, Chrisville, Mayfield Park, Mondeor, Naturena, Eikenhof, Robertsham, Alveda Park, Ormonde, Comptonville, Meredale and surrounding communities.
The Lenasia Service Delivery Centre has reported outages affecting Eldorado Park, New Eldorado Park, Nancefield, Nirvana, Soweto and neighbouring areas supplied through the Nancefield, New Eldorado Park, Nirvana and Soweto substations.
In the Hursthill Service Delivery Centre, electricity supply has been interrupted in Brixton East, Riverlea, Crosby, Mayfair, Langlaagte and nearby areas.
Despite the widespread disruption, City Power said there has been progress in restoring parts of the network. Mangena said ectricity has already been restored to sections of Eikenhof and to Rand Water infrastructure, allowing the utility to resume pumping operations at minimum capacity while repairs continue.
He said restoring supply to critical infrastructure formed part of the utility’s phased response to minimise the broader impact of the outage.
Mangena acknowledged the inconvenience experienced by residents, businesses and essential service providers.
“We understand the significant inconvenience this outage has caused to households, businesses and critical services. We sincerely apologise to all affected customers and thank them for their patience and understanding while we work to restore supply,” said Mangena.
He added that the complexity of the fault means City Power cannot yet provide an estimated restoration time.
“At this stage, it would be irresponsible to speculate on when electricity will be fully restored. An estimated restoration time will only be communicated once our technical teams have completed their investigations and established the full scope of repairs required,” he said.
City Power said all restoration efforts are being guided by safety considerations to ensure the network can be re-energised without risking further damage to critical infrastructure.
The utility has urged affected customers to remain patient while engineers continue fault finding and repair work.
Power interruptions of this nature can be particularly challenging because faults at major switching stations affect multiple substations simultaneously, making restoration more complex than localised outages.
Mangena said City Power has committed to keeping customers informed through regular updates as more information becomes available.
For now, technical teams remain on site at the Orlando Switching Station working to identify the source of the secondary fault, assess the damage and safely restore electricity to thousands of customers affected by one of the city’s most significant network failures in recent months.
