City Power: ‘Some challenges’ with new load shedding schedule

City Power said it has experienced some challenges after taking over the load shedding operations Eskom.

The parastatal handed over operations to City Power, effective from 6 November 2023 in a move that would see residents only subjected to two-hour blackouts at a time – even on stage 5 under the new schedule.

New schedule

City Power spokesperson Isaac Mangena said they have successfully implemented the new load shedding schedule on Monday, which will go a long way in lessening the impact of the blackouts on customers and residents of Joburg.

“The new schedule, among others, eliminates the four-hours straight load shedding until Stage 8, and allows the lights to be on for much longer than with the previous one.

“It also ensure that we are able to exclude essential services, something we couldn’t do – for example in Roodepoort where Rand Water pumps and reservoirs in Robertville were load shed by Eskom, impacting water supply to areas in the west rand,” Mangena said.

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However, Mangena said there have been some challenges.

“We do, however, acknowledge and recognise some of the challenges with regards to some blocks that were shed frequently in a short space of time, with some load shed twice in a space of eight hours.

“Our teams have been working hard since Monday to resolve the glitch, and have found that there is no crisis, and unfortunately this phenomenon will occur in all the 16 blocks in the coming weeks until permanent solution is found,” Mangena added.

Technical solutions

Mangena said each block will experience this “phenomenon” at least four times in a month.

“In other instances, it may happen for two consecutive days, which was the case with the two Blocks 11 and 12 on Monday and Tuesday – though Block 11 was not affected today. It’s worth noting that this is only happening at stage 2, and it may change during higher stages as the demands are also higher.”

“While this will be a temporary inconvenience, the positive is that the residents will have more days of electricity in a month, with some weeks going for up to three straight days without load shedding,” Mangena said.

Mangena said City Power’s team is working on “technical solutions” to address this to ensure there is little or no impact on customers in a long run.

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