The initiative introduced by the City of Johannesburg to help residents avert load-shedding has instead left many in the dark. City officials yesterday admitted the system was not yet 100% operational and that there were glitches.Aubrey Mochela, the general manager of IT at City Power, said: "Very valid concerns have been raised and I agree that the biggest challenge is education. It's a question of the consumer understanding what is happening in their environment."We are giving call centres the capacity to be able to deal with load-limiting issues. The approach that was taken is that this is a metering-related issue and people would direct their complaints there," Mochela said.In April, the city introduced load- limiting, which allows households to receive a load-shedding alert, reduce electricity use and avoid a power outage.Load-limiting was started in just 2000 households and has increased to 27000 in different suburbs.But despite the growing footprint of the system, users are increasing complaints about the inefficiency of load-limiting.The load-limiting, applicable only on smart meters, allows the city to send an sms to the ratepayer, alerting them of the need to reduce demand before power is cut.If the ratepayer reduces electricity use before the actual load-shedding time, they will not experience any interruption to their power supply.When the load-shedding is implemented, power supplied to the house will be reduced, not cut.If the household has not reduced the load, the electricity will go off for 30 seconds and come back. This will give the household time to switch off some appliances.If they still do not switch off anything, there will be another power outage for 30 seconds. This will happen five times. If there is still no load reduction, then there will be an outage until the load-shedding period has elapsed.The system requires that the block of households in which load- limiting takes place has 75% smart meters.Blairgowrie resident Harold Fleishman commended the initiative but complained about a lack of communication."They are not warning us and not sending us the SMS before they cut off the electricity. I have never received an SMS. Every day before 7pm I reduce most of my electricity consumption just to be safe because I do not get any alert from City Power," said Fleishman.He complained that there was no immediate help from the call centres or any other platform for users to get help.But Mochela said issues of support for users were receiving attention and the 30-second on-off warning period would be reviewed...