Dubai Power Outages Fall to 49 Seconds a Year in New World Record

Dubai Electricity and Water Authority has set a new benchmark for electricity reliability, with annual outages dropping to 0.82 minutes per customer in 2025 — equivalent to around 49 seconds per year. The figure improves on the authority’s previous record of 0.94 minutes in 2024, marking a continued decline in outage duration across the network.
DEWA attributed the gains to its Smart Grid programme, which involves investments of AED 7 billion through 2035 to upgrade transmission and distribution systems, reduce losses and optimise load management.
Central to the system is the Automatic Smart Grid Restoration System, which operates without human intervention to detect, isolate and resolve faults while maintaining continuous remote monitoring and control.
Over the past decade, outage duration has dropped from 6.88 minutes in 2012 to 0.82 minutes in 2025. The authority said this places Dubai significantly ahead of international benchmarks, with outage levels nearly 18 times lower than the European Union average of around 15 minutes among leading utilities.