Load shedding vs load reduction: What you need to know

Eskom recently provided its outlook for the summer period, September 1, 2024, to March 31, 2025, and updated its current business operations following five months (152 consecutive days) without load-shedding, including the entire winter season.

Read more: City rejects Eskoms proposed electricity hike

According to a press release by Eskom, “the Generation Operational Recovery Plan, which commenced in March 2023, continued to enhance efficiencies for Eskom and deliver a structural shift in fleet performance. Based on the improved generation performance, the base case scenario indicates that there will be no load-shedding if unplanned outages stay at 13 000MW or below.”

Will electricity consumption in the City of Johannesburg ever stabilise, following in Eskom’s footsteps of making load reduction a thing of the past, and not forcing City Power to take stringent measures to protect the grid from total collapse?

In June, City Power issued a press release that stated, while other measures such as ripple relay and cutoffs of illegal connections were underway to relieve the severe strain on our electricity network due to a massive increase in energy demand, City Power would implement load reduction, which started on June 10.

“The decision to initiate load reduction follows extensive efforts to encourage customers to use electricity wisely and efficiently in recent weeks. Despite warnings about the constrained electricity network in the city, residents have not reduced their electricity consumption, and energy demand has continued to rise,” stated City Power’s spokesperson, Isaac Mangena.

Also read: Eskom requests to increase its prices for the 2023/24 financial by 38.10%

Mangena added that load reduction would be implemented during peak times from 06:00 to 10:00 and 16:00 to 22:00 in high-density areas and suburbs with concerning usage levels that threaten to overload the electricity equipment. Through smart meters, load limiting was also implemented in July to further assist customers in saving energy without switching them off completely.

Part of the measures to lighten the load on the grid, through load reduction, include the installation of ripple relays. A ripple receiver is part of a load management system used to control the electricity supply to the geyser during peak hours.

The spokesperson noted that geysers were among the biggest electricity guzzlers, accounting for up to 50% of household energy costs. “These ripple relay receivers at different households were connected to at least 69 of our substations, and we could monitor customers’ consumption load remotely. City Power will remotely switch off the customer’s geyser once they reach high consumption levels.”

City Power was implementing load reduction as the last resort, an urgent and unavoidable necessity to protect the electricity infrastructure from overloading, which can lead to the equipment exploding, catching fire, and resulting in prolonged widespread outages and delays in repairing the damages and replacing the equipment.

Residents are constantly reminded that although load-shedding was suspended until further notice, should it be reinstated, load reduction will continue parallel to load-shedding.

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