The City of Cape Town notes with dismay the resumption of another round of Eskom load-shedding. The City will try its best to protect most of its customers where it can on the lowest stages of load-shedding, being Stages 1 and 2, through generating extra capacity. Most City customers are currently on Stage 1 load-shedding, while Eskom customers are on Stage 2 until 22:00 tonight. Customers are advised that load-shedding, on top of the wet and windy weather we’ve experienced, leads to increased service requests and affects the time it takes to attend to faults and outages. We thank our customers for their understanding.
City teams are on high alert and are monitoring the situation. We urge our customers to reduce their usage especially during the peak hours between 17:00 and 21:00. Flatten the peak by switching off that which you do not need and do your washing, laundry and other tasks outside of the peak hours where possible. Reducing household energy consumption not only helps with the pressure on Eskom’s supply, it is more climate-friendly and helps households cut electricity usage.
Customers should please bear in mind the stormy weather has caused some area outages which take longer to resolve. Added to this, load-shedding impacts on the time it takes to resolve service requests. Outages due to load-shedding also occur and COVID-19 regulations continue to impact on operations. City teams will continue to do everything in their power to attend to outages in the shortest possible time.
‘It is simply shocking that this situation continues amid the dire state of the South African economy and a pandemic. As a City government, we are doing all we can to put in place measures to move away from our sole reliance on Eskom in the future and enable better and cleaner security of supply for our customers despite the odds but it will not happen immediately. In the meantime we require answers from Eskom and the National Government on why we are again in this situation. We ask our residents and customers to please reduce their energy usage and to please be patient when logging service requests as the impact of the storm and load-shedding will likely affect the time that it takes to resolve a service request,’ said the City’s Mayoral Committee Member for Energy and Climate Change, Councillor Phindile Maxiti.
Nuisance tripping
Residents are encouraged to be mindful that they may also be experiencing outages due to Eskom’s load-shedding, when power is restored after load-shedding, nuisance tripping sometimes occurs. This is when the power is restored to an area and fails to come back on in some parts. The power outage often goes unreported because residents assume that it is due to load-shedding. In the event of load-shedding, residents are encouraged to reduce the risk and occurrence of nuisance tripping by switching off appliances, including geysers, air conditioners and pool pumps prior to load-shedding and leaving one light on to indicate the return of the supply. Customers are requested to treat load-shedding outages that exceed 2,5 hours as unplanned outages and these must please be reported via the City’s service channels to alert the technicians to intervene.
Trees affecting power lines, infrastructure
- Property owners are encouraged to maintain their trees and vegetation. Stormy weather usually contributes to an increase in power outages especially where tree branches grow over and into overhead power lines.
- The City’s Electricity Generation and Distribution Department has made every effort to minimise electricity outages caused by trees growing alongside overhead power lines by carrying out various tree clearing efforts in preparation for winter storms. Vegetation growing too close to overhead power lines is especially dangerous.
- Property owners or those renting a property are urged to do this maintenance work while taking safety precautions and to ensure the required clearance of at least 3,8 metres between vegetation and power lines. Residents are also reminded that branches that encroach on streetlights diminish their efficacy. Clearing of overhead lines can be dangerous and property owners can approach the City for advice if they have already let trees grow too close to power lines.
- Should residents be concerned that there is a risk of trees on City property encroaching on City overhead power lines, they are encouraged to report these cases to the City’s Fault Reporting Centre on 0860 103 089 or FaultReporting.Centre@capetown.gov.za.
Adopt smarter energy use habits in the home:
- Turn the geyser down to 60°C.
- Switch off electrical appliances at the wall sockets when not in use to reduce energy.
- Use less hot water.
- Shower instead of bathing. You will save up to 80% in water and use five times less electricity than heating bath water if you take a short shower.
- Dry your laundry using sunshine where possible and try not to use the tumble dryer. For rainy days, use drying racks indoors.
- Replace regular bulbs with energy-saving ones such as LEDs that use six times less electricity.
- Seal gaps around windows and doors to keep heat from escaping and cold drafts from breezing in.
- Use a stove plate that’s most similar to the size of your pot. An electric stove uses up to 40% of its heat when the pot is too small, which means you waste electricity. If you own an insulation cooker, bring your food to a boil then place it in there. The retained heat slow-cooks, saving up to 60% on energy.