What caused this weekend's Sharjah power cut? Sewa reveals

Sharjah - Residents of Sharjah urged to rationalise power during summer time.

The power outage which hit Al Butina area on Friday and Saturday was caused due to a technical snag in the main distribution plant, because of overloading.
Speaking to Khaleej Times, Dr Rashid Al Leem, chairman of Sharjah Electricity and Water Authority (SEWA), said that despite power rationalization awareness being mounted, residents of Al Butina recorded overloading due to high consumption of power since the onset of summer and it peaked with the beginning of the holy month of Ramadan.
He added that Al Butina is one of the oldest areas in Sharjah, and most residents use window ACs which consume more power. In addition to this, some residents use electric stoves for cooking instead of natural gas. These led to the overloading in the line that supplies the power to the area, the SEWA chief said.
He pointed out that after the fault occurred, the technicians and engineers have been working hard to fix the technical glitch. "As part of its development plan to provide best services to the customer, SEWA is working on replacing and upgrading old power networks lines, cables and transformers. But it will take some time to cover entire Sharjah. We will reach Al Butina area soon to carry out the upgradation," he said.
SEWA has provided some buildings affected by outage with temporary generators to supply power. SEWA technicians and staff currently are working at different sites. Power is being restored in many buildings, and by tomorrow, the problem will be fixed completely.
He urged residents of Sharjah to rationalize power during summer time in order to reduce overloading.
Mohammed Al Amin, a resident of Al Butina, said that the power was disrupted early Friday morning. There was no power for at least four hours and we had to go to our friends/relatives' places in other areas to take rest and carry out our jobs.
Jawaher and Sara, residents of Al Butina, said they had to stay in the mosque until the sunrise and then went to their work from there.
Nittin, P, another local, said he stayed in the car until the power was restored after four hours.
 

• Sharjah