City Power to exclude businesses and key customers from loadshedding

The City of Johannesburg will exclude key customers, essential services and some businesses from loadshedding in an effort to protect livelihoods attract investments and increase the economy within the City, where network configurations allow. 

MMC Cllr Jack Sekwaila says that the move, which will start gradually from early June 2023, will go a long way in saving the much-needed jobs and ensuring businesses remain invested within the City. 

“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 loadshedding 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.” said MMC Sekwaila 

“Most small businesses were forced to close due to the impact of loadshedding 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 loadshedding,” MMC Sekwaila added. 

Already most large power users and key business customers are excluded from loadshedding through the load curtailment agreements with the companies. Other businesses, especially those in industrial areas and employ many people, will be gradually excluded – owing to the reconfiguration of the network and other processes including the rolling out of energy techniques.

The new arrangement will see many other essential services added to the loadshedding exclusion. The City is already exempting most health and water services following the request by the government last year. 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 4-hour schedule currently happening from Stage 4, reduced to 2 hrs schedule throughout up until stage 8.

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 loadshedding on our customers, our infrastructure and the resources.

City Power CEO Ms Tshifularo Mashava added: “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 loadshedding. 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,” said Ms Mashava. 

“With the higher stages of loadshedding which are becoming our lived reality now, the lives of our customers are heavily disrupted. The new schedule will ensure that our customers no longer endure many hours of loadshedding, with others shed for 4hrs in one go. This schedule will reduce the frequency of customers being shed and in addition, blocks will not get shed at the same time for the same stage in consecutive days. In simple terms, our customers will be on for longer than it is now, especially in lower stages,” Mashava said. 

City Power is finalising plans and consultations with Eskom to ensure a smooth transition and the full implementation of the new loadshedding schedule by early to mid-June, which will see City Power assume complete responsibility for operating all of its substations during load shedding. 

“We will be able to ensure an equitable distribution of the load shedding amount on customers and also ensure that we provide Eskom only with the exact amount of load required in each load shedding cycle,” Ms Mashava added.

The design of the new loadshedding schedule achieves the following:

• Eliminates the 4-hour duration in all stages and maintains 2 hours (plus 30 minutes) up to stage 8.
• In a 4 or 5-day Stage 1 or 2 loadshedding, a customer may be shed only once per day. 
• After a block is restored, there is a 2-hour reprieve before the next-scheduled time.
• A block is scheduled in a zig-zag fashion alternating between lower and higher stages in the 24-hour period. This reduces frequency in comparison to the current loadshedding schedule. 
• The maximum duration the block can be switched off in 24 hours is 12 hours or 6 times in higher stages like Stage 8.
• Given that it is 16 blocks, 2 hours per time slot in 24 hours and 31 days, the algorithm is designed like a square to ensure fairness to all blocks. This explains 50% chance of enjoying less frequent and 50% of worst case depending on the day. 

It is for this reason that we needed to exempt the Industrial loads to avoid the worst case scenarios.

We will also gradually start excluding some businesses, and essential services from loadshedding, and City Power will start with network reconfiguration in the coming months which will enable us to exclude most embedded essential services within our network.