Cape Town - The City of Cape Town is calling on residents to switch off electrical appliances before rolling blackouts to reduce the risk of secondary power outages after load shedding bouts.
The City says the increasing extended load shedding-related outages being experienced in areas was due to the non-stop high stages.
Energy Mayco member Beverley van Reenen warned that if electrical appliances were not switched off prior to load shedding, it could delay power coming back on after load shedding, as the system was overloaded.
This came after Eskom on Wednesday alerted its customers that teams were working on restoring a major fibre fault that was affecting remote switching capabilities to various sub stations in the Cape.
Eskom customers were warned that because of this, they should expect delays in having their power restored after load shedding. On Thursday, the fault was resolved and all areas were successfully restored.
In a statement Eskom said: “The root cause of the fault was due to several factors, with the most prevalent being theft and vandalism. Illegal connections, cable theft and the vandalism of infrastructure has escalated into insurmountable proportions in recent years in Eskom supply areas and poses a serious threat to the network, causing continuous electricity supply problems to customers and businesses.”
Van Reenen added, “Load shedding can contribute to secondary outages after the power comes back on. The extended load shedding-related outages that we are seeing increasingly, is due to the non-stop high stages of Eskom load shedding.”
She said power-hungry equipment, like geysers and uninterrupted power supplies, are also contributing to spikes when the power comes on after load shedding.
This overloads the system and causes longer area outages. “The ‘come back’ load is much too high when everyone’s electrical equipment comes back on at the same time. This is a risk especially now with the colder and shorter days that see a spike in demand, especially at peak evening times from 5pm,” Van Reenen said.
She urged that whether at work or at home, everybody needed to find ways to bring down the demand in the evenings to protect the system and reduce the chances of longer outages after a scheduled load shedding slot.