No power cuts to ‘key customers, essential services’ in Joburg from June, says CoJ

The City of Joburg has announced plans to exclude "key customers, essential services and some businesses" from load-shedding in what it says is an effort to "protect livelihoods and attract investments".

This announcement comes a week after one of its entities, City Power, was forced to retract a statement announcing a revised load-shedding schedule for customers and some businesses supplied by it.

The initial statement announced that City Power customers would get load-shedding for two hours over a 24-hour period between stages one and seven of load-shedding.

Now on Thursday, MMC for environment and infrastructure services Jack Sekwaila announced the exemption of load-shedding for certain customers from early June. 

"The city has the responsibility to attract investments, retain those already operating within Joburg, and secure the jobs for our residents. This hasn't been possible with the relentless load-shedding that has heavily impacted the economic activity within the city, leading to some businesses closing down while others emigrated to other provinces where reliable electricity supply is guaranteed.

"Most small businesses were forced to close due to the impact of load-shedding while still recovering from Covid-19. These plans will go a long way in ensuring we keep the economic activity going on in the midst of this grueling load-shedding," he said.

He went on to say that although most large power users and key business customers have been excluded from load-shedding through load curtailment agreements with the companies, other businesses, especially those in industrial areas and those that employ many people, will also be gradually excluded because of "the reconfiguration of the network and other processes including the rolling out of energy techniques".

Those set to be excluded will be essential services currently not covered by an exemption granted by the city following a request from government.

"We may not right away be able to exclude all at once because of the embedded nature of the network. The changes come as City Power works towards implementing a new load-shedding schedule which will see the four-hour schedule currently happening from stage four, reduced to two hours schedule throughout up until stage eight.

"City Power technicians and engineers have been working hard for the past few months, among others conducting simulations, looking for ways to reduce the burden of load-shedding on our customers, our infrastructure and the resources."

City Power CEO  Tshifularo Mashava said: "To achieve standardisation, City Power identified 16 blocks that can shed the required load per block. It is important to mention that the substations serving the Reuven, Hursthill, Alexandra and Inner City areas are remotely controlled by the City Power control room during load-shedding.

"The substations in all other areas are still manually operated and measures are underway, with budgets committed to ensure that those substations in other SDC are operated remotely. With the higher stages of load-shedding which are becoming our lived reality now, the lives of our customers are heavily disrupted." 

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