“As the frequency of load-shedding increases, the city’s resources will be severely stretched by having to implement the continuous switching on and off of electricity in the various regions of Tshwane. The same team that implements Eskom’s load-shedding plays a critical role in the repair and maintenance of our electricity network.”
With stage 6 load-shedding, teams will have significantly less time available to work on restoring electricity for outages not related to load-shedding.
“Despite these challenges, our electricity teams are committed to ensuring that the city restores power outages as speedily as possible, but the reality is that our systems are not designed to cope with this situation.”
Johnston appealed to residents to help limit the negative effects by switching off appliances and energy-consuming machinery during load-shedding.
“We will monitor the situation closely and ensure that we respond swiftly to all electricity network challenges that arise due to load-shedding.”
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Higher load-shedding levels having negative effect on Tshwane power network
MMC warns of additional outages due to overloading and vandalism
Image: 123RF/JAKUB GOJDA
The City of Tshwane says higher levels of load-shedding have a negative effect on its electricity network and infrastructure, and inhibit its ability to attend to outages.
After having already implemented stage 4 load-shedding for several days, Eskom announced on Tuesday it would implement stage 6 during peak demand hours on Tuesday and Wednesday.
The power utility said this was due to the unlawful industrial action under way at its plants.
“Unfortunately, stage 6 load-shedding means that all Tshwane regions will be affected by rolling blackouts for a minimum of six hours per day. These blackouts will be implemented in two or three stages per day,” said utilities and regional operations MMC Daryl Johnston.
“As frequently communicated, our electricity networks were never designed for load-shedding and therefore continuously switching the network on and off has a major damaging affect on the infrastructure.”
Johnston warned residents to be aware that load-shedding can result in additional outages due to overloading of the network as well as vandalism and theft of the electrical infrastructure.
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“As the frequency of load-shedding increases, the city’s resources will be severely stretched by having to implement the continuous switching on and off of electricity in the various regions of Tshwane. The same team that implements Eskom’s load-shedding plays a critical role in the repair and maintenance of our electricity network.”
With stage 6 load-shedding, teams will have significantly less time available to work on restoring electricity for outages not related to load-shedding.
“Despite these challenges, our electricity teams are committed to ensuring that the city restores power outages as speedily as possible, but the reality is that our systems are not designed to cope with this situation.”
Johnston appealed to residents to help limit the negative effects by switching off appliances and energy-consuming machinery during load-shedding.
“We will monitor the situation closely and ensure that we respond swiftly to all electricity network challenges that arise due to load-shedding.”
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