Load-shedding can take out your water too. Don't find out the hard way.
When the power cuts, pump stations and booster pumps can go down with it — often without warning. AquaTrack watches your tank through every outage and tells your phone the truth about your water level, so you know before the tap runs dry.
Why load-shedding takes your water with it
Water and electricity are more connected than most people realise. Municipal pump stations, booster pumps for higher-lying suburbs, and even some borehole systems rely on grid power to move water into reservoirs and up through the pipe network. When load-shedding cuts that power, pressure can drop or stop altogether in affected areas — often with no warning beyond the load-shedding schedule itself.
Higher stages of load-shedding (Stage 4 and above) tend to mean longer, more frequent outages, which compounds the problem: a tank that would normally recover between short cuts doesn't get the chance to. Add an ageing pipe network, reservoir leaks, or a pipeline burst — common across several South African metros — and an outage that should last two hours can stretch much longer while infrastructure recovers.
The result: the moment you most need to know how much water you have left is exactly the moment you have no way to check — unless something is watching the tank for you.
Conditions right now
Hot, dry weather increases household water demand — exactly when an unplanned outage is hardest to plan around. Here's what it looks like today in the four metros most affected.
Current conditions
Weather data from Open-Meteo. Hot, dry conditions increase household water demand — exactly when an unplanned outage is hardest to plan around.
What this looks like, metro by metro
Every South African metro has its own mix of load-shedding and municipal infrastructure challenges. Here's a realistic picture of each.
Johannesburg deals with a double squeeze: national load-shedding cuts power to pump stations, and separately the city's ageing pipe network and reservoir leaks cause their own low-pressure and no-water periods — sometimes described locally as feeling close to a 'Day Zero.' Recovery after an outage can take hours while reservoirs refill.
Cape Town avoided its highly publicised 2018 Day Zero crisis and has since invested heavily in reducing water losses and replacing ageing pipes. That track record is reassuring, but load-shedding still cuts power to booster pumps in higher-lying suburbs, and any tank owner still loses the ability to see their water level during an outage.
eThekwini has experienced repeated water interruptions from pipeline bursts and infrastructure failures, on top of load-shedding stages. Reservoirs can take a significant time to recover after a major line failure, which means outages here are often longer and less predictable than a scheduled load-shedding block.
Nelson Mandela Bay faces a compounding challenge: thousands of active leaks across the network and constrained municipal budgets have slowed pipeline maintenance, alongside the same load-shedding stages affecting the rest of the country. For residents here, an empty tank during an outage is a more serious risk than in most other metros.
Conditions change frequently and vary by suburb and elevation — treat the above as general context, not a guarantee of your specific supply.
How AquaTrack keeps working when the power doesn't
The sensor never plugs into mains power, so a load-shedding stage doesn't affect it at all. It keeps measuring your tank around the clock.
Set a low-level threshold and get a phone or Telegram alert with enough warning to fill up, ration usage, or plan around the next outage.
See your real-time level and usage history from your phone, whether you're at home, at work, or away for the weekend.
Note: AquaTrack reports over your home WiFi, so your router and internet connection need power to stay online during an outage — a small UPS or inverter on the router is a common and affordable way to keep that link alive.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does load-shedding actually affect water supply?
Often, yes. Many municipal pump stations and booster pumps that move water into reservoirs and up to higher-lying homes run on grid electricity. When the power goes off, pressure can drop or supply can stop entirely in some areas, especially at higher elevations. The exact impact varies by suburb and municipality.
How do I know if my tank is running low during an outage?
Without a sensor, you generally don't — until you turn on a tap and nothing comes out, or you climb up to check manually. A solar-powered sensor like AquaTrack keeps monitoring through outages (it doesn't depend on your home's mains power) and sends an alert to your phone before the tank runs dry.
Will AquaTrack still work if the power is off?
Yes. The sensor is solar and battery powered and connects over your WiFi network, so it keeps measuring and reporting through load-shedding as long as your router and internet connection have power (for example, from an inverter or UPS). Many South African households already run their WiFi router through a small backup power supply for exactly this reason.
Which areas benefit most from a water level sensor?
Any household relying on a JoJo tank, borehole storage, or rainwater harvesting benefits, but it matters most where outages are frequent or unpredictable — including higher-lying suburbs in Johannesburg, areas affected by pipeline failures in Durban, and Nelson Mandela Bay, where ageing infrastructure adds an extra layer of risk on top of load-shedding.
Does this replace the need for a backup water supply?
No — AquaTrack doesn't create water, it tells you the truth about how much you have left, in time to act. Pairing it with a properly sized JoJo tank or rainwater harvesting setup gives you both the buffer and the visibility to use it wisely.
Know your water level. Even when the power doesn't.
See it in action with the no-signup demo, or order a sensor for your own tank today.