Team Energy tackled nearly 19 000 power faults amid unprecedented storms, work continues

27 July 2024

In just 10 days, between 9 and 19 July 2024, the City’s devoted Electricity teams attended to almost 19 000 primarily storm-related faults. Recent storms have wreaked havoc across the City resulting in damages in excess of R16,6 million to date on power infrastructure alone. Our teams have been working flat out over the last two weeks of unprecedented storms and the City thanks residents for their support.

‘Electricity staff in all regions attended to18 974 power faults. The City’s Area South, which includes the Mitchells Plain, Muizenberg, Wynberg and Gugulethu districts recorded the highest incidents of damaged infrastructure. Approximately R16,6 million in damages to electricity infrastructure was recorded in all areas of the city. 

‘Work continues as our dedicated teams remain on the ground to attend to urgent repairs and critical maintenance as we expect more impacts to be felt with the heavy rain predicted from today. 

‘High service request volumes continue to be experienced and we are updating our electricity outage list via the City’s social media channels as information is received. Residents are reminded to report their electricity faults to us as soon as possible and to use the City’s convenient and easy to use fault-reporting channels,’ said the City’s Mayoral Committee Member for Energy, Alderman Xanthea Limberg.

Electricity services and damage: (please only log on one channel):

WhatsApp: 060 018 1505

Call Centre: 0860 103 089

SMS: 31220 (Free SMS service doesn't apply)

Email: power@capetown.gov.za

eServices: www.capetown.gov.za/servicerequests

Report electricity infrastructure theft and vandalism  

Report suspicious behaviour to the City’s Public Emergency Communication Centre: 021 480 7700 

 

Switch off, so we can switch you back on

City Energy teams fix faults in areas as soon as possible. But often cannot switch customers back on because the power keeps tripping.

This is because of the large volumes of grid-connected inverters, and other power hungry appliances, coming on all at the same time – totally overloading the system, and causing it to trip.

 

Please unplug all grid-connected inverters especially. 

They automatically connect to the municipal supply. 

This causes a surge when the power comes back on. 

Then it trips again, and is off. 

 

End

Published by:
City of Cape Town, Media Office