- Several areas in the Western Cape are without power after storms hammered the province and Eskom’s infrastructure at the weekend.
- Eskom says its teams are on the ground addressing the outages, but the bad weather makes repairs difficult.
- The inclement weather has also sparked concerns that loadshedding could return after 12 days without power cuts.
Scrolling through social media at the weekend you may have seen posts about the storms currently battering the Western Cape. Videos of truck trailers being blown of bridges and folks stuck in floods did the rounds on social media throughout the weekend as the temperature dropped in other parts of the country.
Aside from the rain, wind has caused havoc across the province leading to some areas being left powerless.
“Parts of the network experienced minor structural damages leading to a loss of supply to a number of areas,” Eskom wrote in a power alert on Monday.
The areas affected by this loss of supply include:
- Beaufort West,
- Kraaifontein,
- Khayelitsha,
- Klawer and surrounding farms,
- Kylemore,
- Gordon’s Bay,
- Sir Lowry’s Pass,
- Somerset West,
- Stellenbosch farms,
- Vredendal.
Unfortunately, as the storms are yet to abate, this makes restoring supply difficult. However, Eskom says it’s teams are on the ground working on restoring supply to the affected areas.
Customers who are still powerless should log a fault with Eskom via the MyEskom App for Android and iOS or using the Alfred Chatbot. Alternatively, customers can call 086 003 7566 to log or get a status update on a fault.
Loadshedding has been suspended for the better part of 12 days but how much longer that can be sustained remains to be seen. This is because temperatures have dropped and as such the likelihood that South Africans will use heaters increases. This will increase demand and Eskom has historically battled to meet the country’s energy consumption.
As such keep an eye on EskomSePush for updates to the loadshedding schedule, just in case.
