WATCH: Load limiting explained
JOBURG - Some residents went into a spin when City Power instituted load limiting.
However, the electricity has entity appealed to residents not to panic but to rather comply by reducing their electricity usage during load limiting which is carried out between 7pm and 9pm.
City Power managing director, Sicelo Xulu said they started to roll out a solution called load limiting in its areas of supply in Johannesburg whereby residences will experience recurring disconnections.
Xulu advised households to reduce their consumption by switching off non-essential items such as geysers, stoves and pool pumps when they experience disconnections to ensure a steady supply.
“Load limiting is a technology that enables City Power to accurately identify and ascertain household consumption in real time in relation to the available generating capacity,” he said.
The deployment of load limiting will enable City Power to remotely disconnect households with smart meters that don’t comply with requests to reduce consumption. Those with excessive consumption would experience repetitive disconnections at five-minute intervals for a period of 30 seconds each until they have reduced their consumption to the required levels.
“If your electricity is disconnecting for a period of 30 seconds, you need to comply by immediately switching off your heavy current appliances,” he said.
By the end of next week, City Power plans to have uploaded about 30 000 smart meters with load-limiting capabilities. The total number of smart meters installed is currently over 92 000.
The enitity has embarked on a mass deployment of load limiting to utilise the power of technology to avert load shedding. The smart meters that have been uploaded with load-limiting technology will be curtailed from an average household consumption of 42Amps to 21Amps. This will allow affected households to still run light power consuming appliances and applications such as lights, TVs and alarm systems.
Xulu said load limiting will slash the average household consumption by half, thus reducing pressure on the grid and ensuring the security of electricity supply.
“In the first two weeks, household usage will be limited to 21Amps between 7pm and 10pm during peak hour when the grid is generally under severe constraint. City Power envisages that all smart meters in the City of Johannesburg will have load-limiting capabilities by the end of August. Residents are warned that there might be planned outages during the rollout phase, but Xulu said the duration of these disconnections will be kept to a minimum.
WATCH: A video which demonstrates load limitingÂ
Details: 087 022 0540 or visit www.citypower.co.za
