With the wet weather, temperatures beginning to drop and the load on the network increasing, City Power is appealing to members of the community to use electricity efficiently to curb supply interruptions due to overloading on its electricity infrastructure this coming winter.
Trends of high energy demand especially during winter, and particularly during peak periods in the mornings between 05:00 and 09:00, and in the evenings between 17:00 and 21:00 have been recorded.
To avoid the unnecessary power failures, disconnections and load reduction, City Power advised its customers to refrain from illegally operating the network, vandalising the electricity infrastructure, stealing electricity through meters bypasses, meter tampering and illegal vending.
In a statement issued by City Power on Monday, April 11 the power utility confirmed that they would beef up the teams and resources to deal with the outage backlogs in Johannesburg.
According to City Power spokesperson Isaac Mangena at the break of dawn there were about 1 990 outage calls from customers, with some of them over 24hrs.
Hurst Hill depot accounted for most of the outages, with 650 calls coming from the area, followed by Lenasia and Roodepoort.
The sore points are in Paarlshoop, Riverlea in Hurst Hill, Freedom Park, Eldorado Park, Vlakfontein, Trade Route Mall in Lenasia, Lindhaven, Witpoortjie in Roodepoort, Houghton, Bellevue, Bezuidenhout, Alexandra and Klipfontein, among others.
Mangena said that most of the outages were caused by overloading of the network due to the high demand of electricity because of the cold and rainy weather.
Other factors contributing to the increase in outages include cable fault, equipment failure, and cable theft.
“With persistent rain and inclement weather, most of the repair work was disrupted over the weekend, leaving most outages unresolved. We are however deploying more resources, technicians and operators to the problematic areas to help deal with the backlogs. We are also stocking up to ensure depots have sufficient material to deal with the outages. We appeal to our customers for patience and cooperation as we deal with the backlogs.
“We continue to call on the customers to reduce the use of electricity and switch off power guzzlers such as geysers, stoves, multiple heaters, and pool pumps, all of which lead to the overloading of the network and equipment blowing up.
“While the rain is continuing, we are hoping to reduce most of the backlog by early afternoon on April 12.
“We apologise for the inconvenience this is causing to our customers,” said Mangena.
