Cape Town - The City of Cape Town has asked residents to reduce their electricity usage during the peak time from 5pm onwards, as the bad weather is already causing high demand.
The South African Weather Service (SAWS) has warned of inclement weather that would hit parts of the province on Tuesday night and last until late on Wednesday evening.
SAWS warned of localised damage to formal and informal settlements, where some transport routes and travel services might be affected by winds and falling trees.
The City’s Disaster Risk Management spokesperson, Chantel Alexander, said all City services and external agencies were on standby to deal with any potential effects from the adverse weather.
Added to this is the announcement from Eskom that stage 2 load shedding would be implemented from 5pm on Wednesday and last until 11pm on Friday.
The power utility said this followed the loss of generation capacity as the system was severely constrained and emergency generation reserves needed to be replenished.
The City of Cape Town said its customers would be shielded from one stage of load shedding and would be on stage 1, but the City would update customers closer to the time as to load shedding’s impact for the rest of the week.
The City has called on residents to cut down on their usage during peak electricity use time.
“Please continue to reduce usage, especially during the peak time from 5pm and switch off all non-essential electrical appliances to avoid nuisance tripping.
“Make sure your devices are charged and all your contingencies are in place. Remember, when the traffic lights are out, intersections must be treated as four-way stops. The motorist who stops first, may go first if it is safe to do so.
“The severe storm is causing high electricity service request volumes. Load shedding will exacerbate this situation and it will likely take some time to restore outages. The City thanks customers for understanding.
“Let us know if your power remains off for longer than the load shedding schedule,” the City tweeted.
Residents are advised to contact the City on their service channels, but it has requested for people to only use one channel and to not log the same request multiple times:
- Call Centre: 0860 103 089
- SMS: 31220 (standard charges apply)
- Online:
Previously, Mayor Dan Plato lashed out against Eskom for its continued load shedding, which he said has been “absolutely destructive amid a time of Covid-19”.
The City and Western Cape municipalities are pushing hard for Independent Power Producers (IPPs).
In October last year, amendments to the electricity regulations were finally gazetted which could pave the way for municipalities to source power from IPPs.
The mayor said this process should be expedited because “we cannot go on like this”.
Cape Argus