Botswana Power Outage Leaves Parts of Country Without Electricity

Botswana experienced an unplanned power outage on Saturday after a disturbance on the national electricity system disrupted supply to several parts of the country.

Botswana Power Corporation (BPC) said power had been restored to most affected areas, while restoration efforts continued in locations that remained without electricity. The utility did not immediately provide further details on the cause or extent of the system disturbance.

The interruption affected both households and businesses, although the disruption was being progressively contained as BPC crews worked to reconnect customers.

BPC apologised to customers for the unexpected interruption and said its teams were continuing restoration work in the remaining affected areas.

The outage comes as BPC continues efforts to improve the reliability of its generation fleet and electricity network. The utility has previously said reliability problems remain with some generating units that have yet to undergo remediation, although repair times and the average period units remain in service have improved.

BPC's latest power-status information says the utility has reduced average repair times from roughly 30–50 days to about 12 days, while the average time between failures has increased to around 120 days for units on the grid.

The incident for Botswana, shows the continuing importance of maintaining enough generation and network resilience to limit the impact of sudden system disturbances. While most customers were brought back online, the remaining restoration work demonstrated the need for continued investment in the power system as the utility works toward more dependable electricity supply.