Cape Town – City teams have been working around the clock to attend to all electricity service requests in the metro due to weather-damaged infrastructure.
Mayco Member for Energy, Xanthea Limberg and senior energy officials visited Wynberg where electricity teams urgently attended to weather-damaged infrastructure.
In Wynberg, severe weather last night caused high levels of damage to some property and infrastructure.
The City said delayed repair times may be experienced due to the safety conditions required for electrical work and high call volumes.
"The severe weather conditions over the last 24 hours have caused widespread damage to our electricity infrastructure and our teams are working around the clock to attend to hundreds of service requests, including over 22 area faults. All our teams and contractors remain on high alert,“ Limberg said.
“While hundreds of faults have been resolved in the last 24 hours, we could see hundreds more faults being reported during the course of the day if strong winds or rain intensifies.
“Damaged infrastructure from harsh weather conditions typically takes longer to repair and it is extremely unsafe for City Energy teams to use aerial platforms as a result of the strong winds.
“In many instances, the accurate times of restoration are regrettably not possible to provide to residents,” Limberg said.
“High call volumes are being experienced and our outage list which we provide to the public is being updated as information is received from the teams on the ground.
“We encourage residents to report their faults to us via our service channels, including our new WhatsApp line, and to keep an eye on our social media channels for updates on the area outages,” said Limberg.
Switch off, so we can switch you back on
City Energy teams fix faults in areas as soon as possible. But they often cannot switch customers back on because the power keeps tripping.
This is because of the large volumes of grid-connected inverters, and other power hungry appliances, coming on all at the same time – totally overloading the system, and causing it to trip.
– Please unplug all grid-connected inverters especially. They automatically connect to the municipal supply. This causes a surge when the power comes back on.
Then it trips again, and is off. Switch off to switch back on.
Please disconnect connected inverters (and switch off power hungry equipment such as geysers and heaters) to prevent tripping, so that power can be restored.
The impacted areas include:
· Wynberg
· Lakeside
· Brooklyn
· Rondebosch
· Plattekloof
· Penelyn Estate
· Woodstock
· Mfuleni
· Bergvliet
· Fish Hoek
· Grassy Park
· Meadowridge
· Lentegeur
· Rocklands
· Philippi
· Eagle Park
· Constantia
· Bishopscourt
· Plumstead
· Athlone
· Pinelands
· Steenberg
· Newlands
· Gugulethu
The City’s said its area outages list is being updated as information is received from the electricity teams. If an area is not included, it does not mean teams are not aware of the matter.
Electricity services and damage (only log on one channel): WhatsApp – 060 018 1505, Call Centre – 0860 103 089, SMS – 31220 (Free SMS service doesn't apply), Email – power@capetown.gov.za, eServices - www.capetown.gov.za/servicerequests