Load rotation and cut-offs due to overloading

City Power urges customers to use electricity efficiently to avoid the likelihood of increased outages during the cold winter season, and to minimize the possibility of load rotation in some hotspot areas.

City Power spokesperson Isaac Mangena said with the winter season knocking they have already experienced capacity constraints in most areas especially where illegal connections are on the rise.

“We are projecting the demand for electricity to increase and the power system is forecast to be tight in the coming weeks.  “City Power has activated its winter plan in anticipation of the challenges that are brought by increased number of unplanned power outages due to overloaded grid.

“The plan includes among others increasing our substation transformer capacity to a maximum level, make resources, spares and materials readily available for quick and adequate response to power outages, and embark on an educational campaign to advise customers to use power sparingly.

“The power outages are normally caused by high demand for electricity usage during the cold months of winter, which leads to network overloading. Illegal connections also exacerbate the problem. “While 90 per cent of the City Power areas are electrified, informal settlements are still mushrooming and often illegally connect to electricity infrastructure, thus overloading the grid beyond its capacity.

“This behaviour violates City’s bylaws, causes infrastructure and equipment failure, and it is usually accompanied by vandalism of the electricity network,” explained Isaac Mangena.

City Power has identified certain hotspot areas where there are increases in electricity demand partly due to illegal connections, which cause repeated unplanned power outages.

Part of the strategy is to increase capacity in those areas, complete normalization programmes, and City Power will embark on massive operations to remove the illegal connections in the hotspots.

In Region F, hotspots are Mai Mai, Mangolongolo informal settlement, George Goch informal settlement, Jeppe informal settlement and Booysens informal settlement.