No solution yet for new loadshedding schedule challenges in Joburg, says City Power

The city’s power entity took over Johannesburg’s loadshedding schedule from Eskom at the beginning of the week, with the aim of bringing relief to residents and implementing only two hours of loadshedding at any given time, no matter the state of loadshedding.

That will be the case except when Eskom rolls out stage 8 of loadshedding.

However, City Power says there have been challenges in some areas where residents experienced longer hours of loadshedding.

City Power spokesperson Isaac Mangena says they are aware of some of the concerns from customers, especially in the northern suburbs.

"There have been some technical errors during the onboarding of the new schedule due to the midnight overlapping transition that happened.

“We are busy rectifying that and we should be able to allocate the blocks correctly in the new schedule by later this evening (Wednesday evening).

“We have 16 blocks of load shedding and a block will only repeat after all the blocks have been exhausted in a single day," says Mangena.

He adds the new schedule was welcomed by many, especially businesses, some of whom are already exempt from loadshedding.

“The new loadshedding schedule also ensures 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 loadshed by Eskom, impacting water supply to areas in the West Rand.

“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 loadshed twice in a space of eight hours," says Mangena.

City Power technical teams have been deployed since Monday to resolve the glitch, but the power entity warns that the problems will persist until a permanent solution is found.

"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.

“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 areas going for up to three straight days without load shedding," says Mangena.

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