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Acting MMC for EISD, Cllr Leah Knott is closely monitoring outage backlogs as they are being cleared by City Power following an uptick in outages this past weekend. 

“City Power is dealing with an abnormal number of breakdowns as Johannesburg residents consumed more power to deal with the cold and wet weather,” said Acting MMC for Environment & Infrastructure Services Department Cllr. Leah Knott.

Since Friday when severe downpours began in the city, City Power has been dealing with 1944 outages across Johannesburg with 260 alone related to the Hursthill substation. More technicians and contractors have been deployed to deal with this crisis as fast as possible. 

City Power has indicated the outages have been mainly caused by the surge in demand which has led to cable faults and infrastructure failures on the city’s aged power grid. Rampant cable theft has further complicated the situation with City Power personnel too being under sustained attack from these criminals on almost a daily basis.

With Eskom also being forced to implement loadshedding from Monday night the process of fully restoring power has further been delayed as technicians are unable to work on the network during these periods. 

“The unfortunate fact is that Johannesburg’s power network is aged and in need of constant maintenance and support to keep functioning at an optimum capacity. It is during times like this that City Power also has to deal with surges on their network as demand increases,” Knott added. 

“We thus appeal to all residents in our city to always use electricity sparingly. Everyone can play their role in preventing outages by only using appliances when absolutely necessary and turning off their geysers and pool pumps until the backlog is dealt with.” 

Issued by City of Joburg Acting MMC Environment and Infrastructure Services Leah Knott