Chris Minns asks Sydney residents to keep washing machines off to avoid heatwave outages

With hot weather in Sydney’s west, Aemo has issued alerts calling for more generation from electricity suppliers to avoid blackouts. Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian

Soaring temperatures and strained power supplies have prompted the New South Wales government to ask residents to reduce electricity use in a bid to avoid outages.

The premier, Chris Minns, said Sydney residents should avoid using power-hungry devices if they can during a crunch period, which was expected to last for five hours.