Joburg City Power website struggles with high traffic

Johannesburg -  High internet traffic volumes have put a strain on the Johannesburg City Power website after power utility Eskom announced countrywide load shedding on Monday.

Eskom on Monday announced stage one load shedding, which means the power utility plans to cut 1000 MW by implementing rolling blackouts.

As a result, load shedding has been implemented across the country from 11am to 10pm on Monday.

Eskom customers are able to view load shedding schedules on loadshedding.eskom.co.za.

However, the power utility has said that municipal customers can obtain their schedules from the likes of the City Power website.

But Johannesburg’s City Power website has struggled to keep up with demand during midday on Monday as it experienced slow load times.

City Power Spokesperson Sol Masolo told Fin24 that the organisation’s IT staff are aware of the problem and are working on it. He told Fin24 that high traffic volumes on the website have affected its load times.

"They (City Power IT staff) say they're currently working on capacity in the network to take more people,” Masolo told Fin24.

"At the moment, they agree that it's a bit slow, and that they are working on making sure that it turns (loads) quicker even when it's under stress.

"And that's why we decided that we're going to put the load shedding schedule even on our Twitter account,” Masolo said.

To keep up-to-date with Johannesburg’s load shedding schedule, the city’s residents can view City Power’s twitter account or click on this link.

Uh-oh. @CityPowerJhb website crashed under #loadshedding pressure. http://t.co/LbMXatYVuv. @MaMfikoe @DavidCOJ102 @DavidCOJ102

— Clr Tim (@jozi117) January 26, 2015