City Power is requesting residents to be patient with the current situation with the power outages.
Also read: Power outages occur throughout the city
Sol Masolo, City Power spokesperson, said the entity is working on initiatives to address the infrastructure backlog which is the main cause of the power outages.
“City Power is utilising revenue enhancement initiatives such as auditing of large power users (LPUs) service connections, locating all unregistered customers of electricity, replacing old conventional meters with smart meters which gives the benefit of billing accuracy and removal of bypassed, faulty and inaccessible meters.
Also read: Power outages due to theft, vandalism
“With enhanced revenue, we are able to construct and upgrade the network which will significantly reduce the infrastructure backlog by the end of the 2018/19 financial year,” said Masolo.
He said residents should note that City Power is not scheduling any load shedding.
“City Power has load shedding schedules on the website which customers can visit to view when they are affected by load shedding. However, currently, we are not doing load shedding. City Power only implements load shedding when instructed to do so by Eskom,” said Masolo.
He further said City Power cannot control the current power outages.
“The current outages are unplanned. There are no applicable schedules on unplanned power outages.
“This category of power outages is not planned and takes place at any time of the day or night,” said Masolo.
He said updating the infrastructure will take time and will cost about R19-billion by the end of the 2021/22 financial year.
City Power requested residents to report issues that contribute to the outages.
“We encourage residents to report cable theft via our cable theft 24-hour line 011 490 7911 or 011 490 7504 or at your nearest police station. The money that is supposed to refurbish and construct new infrastructure is diverted to replace stolen and vandalised infrastructure,” said Masolo.
Masolo said the network is constrained during the winter season and customers are urged to save energy by applying the following principles of energy efficiency:
- Switch off electricity when not in use.
- Use or change to energy efficient appliances and lighting (CFLs, LED lights, infrared heaters).
- Use alternative energy sources (solar heating and gas).
- Set your pool pump to run for shorter periods.
- Switch off lights in unoccupied rooms.
- Use electric blankets to pre-heat the bed for approximately 15 minutes. Do not sleep with electric blankets on.
- Dress warmly and use fleece blankets.
- Preferably change your curtains to thicker and dark colours that retain more heat.
- Make use of a geyser blanket.
- Use an appropriately sized pot for each plate when you’re cooking, using a small pot on a large plate will waste electricity.
- Let plenty of sunlight in during the day by keeping curtains open wide, but close them as soon as the sun sets to seal in all the warmth.
- Use or change to oil heaters or wall heaters (open spaces are more difficult to heat).
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