The NSW Environment Minister is warning energy companies against turning off the power to thousands of Sydneysiders.

Ausgrid is conducting maintenance works across Sydney while many are stuck working from home.

Environment Minister Matt Kean told Ray Hadley he’s told the energy providers non-essential work must not go ahead.

“We’ll be going through every one of the proposed outages and I’ll be applying the pub test to them.

“If I don’t think they’re critical works they won’t be going ahead.”

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