Joburg's power puzzle
Despite Johannesburg's population growing from 4.2-million in 2010 to 5.9-million in 2025, the amount of electricity the city sells is decreasing. City Power’s data shows a sharp drop. In 2009/10, City Power sold 11 633 GWh. By 2024/25, this had dropped to 6 681 GWh.
City Power says it loses nearly 30% of the electricity it buys from Eskom. The biggest driver of the long-term decline in sales is “non-technical losses,” which are electricity theft, meter bypassing, illegal connections, and unmetered consumption. Technical losses, caused by ageing infrastructure, overloaded feeders, and unbalanced loads, are also a problem. But it is non-technical losses that are the main cause of revenue loss, says City Power.
City Power still buys around 90% of its bulk electricity from Eskom and 10% from Kelvin Power Station in Kempton Park. It also has short-term contracts with four independent power producers (92 MW of capacity in total) and has approved 26 MW of small-scale embedded generation, according to its latest available annual report (2023/2024).
But unless losses are brought under control, and metering and enforcement improve, electricity sales are likely to continue falling, despite a growing population.
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