City of Cape Town teams have been working non-stop to attend to all electricity service requests in the metro due to weather-damaged infrastructure.
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As reported by IOL, in Wynberg, high levels of damage to property and infrastructure were caused by severe weather on Wednesday night.
The City stated that repair times might be delayed 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,’ said Limberg.
In the meantime, more faults have been reported as the severity of weather conditions has increased.
‘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,’ said Limberg.
‘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 added.
‘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,’ said Limberg.
‘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,’ Limberg added.
City Energy teams are fixing faults in areas, but they often cannot switch customers back on if the power keeps on tripping.
This is caused by the large volumes of grid-connected inverters and other power-hungry appliances, which are all coming on simultaneously. This overloads the system, causing it to trip.
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 has further stated that its area outages list is constantly being updated as ‘information is received from the electricity teams’.
If an area is not included, it does not mean that the relevant teams are unaware of the matter.
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Picture: Screenshot / City of Cape Town