Power surges and your home: the cover most South Africans forget

Good news first: South Africa has had a remarkable run of stable power — over 300 consecutive days without load-shedding by early 2026, with Eskom projecting a load-shedding-free winter. But here's the catch most people miss: the real threat to your appliances was never the power going off. It's the surge when it comes back on.

Whether it's a substation switching over, planned maintenance, a summer storm, or load-shedding making a comeback, the moment power is restored your home can take a voltage spike far bigger than the 230 volts your fridge, TV and laptop are built for. So let's talk about what's really happening — and whether your insurance has your back.

Why surges, not outages, do the damage

When power returns to a suburb, the grid can briefly send thousands of volts down the line versus the 230V your appliances expect. Sensitive electronics — flatscreens, laptops, decoders, and the circuit boards inside fridges and washing machines — take the hit. The cruel part is that a surge often doesn't kill an appliance outright. It chips away at it. The fridge keeps humming along… until one day it doesn't, and you never link it to the spike weeks earlier.

What it can cost you

A single bad surge can take out a TV, a fridge compressor, a gate motor, a router and a microwave all at once. Replace that lot together and you're easily looking at tens of thousands of rands — for an event that lasted a fraction of a second.

How to protect your home

• Fit a surge-protection device at your main distribution (DB) board — use a certified electrician.
• Use plug-point surge protectors for sensitive electronics like TVs, decoders and computers.
• Switch big appliances like geysers and fridges off at the DB board during an outage, then back on a few minutes after power returns.
• Unplug what you can during planned outages or storms.

Does your insurance actually cover surge damage?

This is where people get caught out. Power-surge damage is one of the most common household claims in South Africa, and it's usually covered under household contents insurance — often as a specific 'power surge' benefit with its own limit. The key words are 'usually' and 'limit'. Some policies include it automatically, some make it optional, and many cap the payout well below what your electronics are worth. If you've never checked yours, you're guessing. (Remember: buildings cover protects the structure — it's household contents cover that covers your appliances.)

Load-shedding may be on the back foot for now, but our grid is still ageing, storms still roll in, and Eskom has been clear that cuts could return if breakdowns spike. Surge protection plus the right contents cover is cheap insurance against an expensive, silent problem.