City Power activates its Winter Plan in anticipation of the challenges caused by the increased number of unplanned power outages due to overloaded grid.
The City of Johannesburg’s power entity stated that they are already experiencing capacity constraints in most areas as we go into the winter season. With illegal connections on the rise and the possibility of customers not using electricity efficiently, City Power is expecting the demand for electricity to increase and the power system is forecast to be tight in the coming weeks.
City Power spokesperson Isaac Mangena shared the plans put in place to address the issue. “The plan includes, among others, increasing substations transformer capacity to a maximum level, make resources, spares and materials readily available for quick and adequate response to power outages, and embark on educational campaign to advise customers to use power sparingly.”
During the cold months of winter the demand for electricity usage skyrockets, normally resulting in power outages. Mangena reiterated that illegal connections also exacerbate the problem, ‘While 90 per cent of the City Power areas are electrified, informal settlements are still mushrooming and often illegally connect to electricity infrastructure, thus overloading the grid beyond its capacity.”
Not only are these connections against the law, but they also cause infrastructure and equipment failure and is usually accompanied by vandalism of the electricity network explained Mangena.
City Power has already identified certain hotspot areas where there are increases in electricity demand partly due to illegal connections. As part of the Winter Plan, they will be embarking on massive operations to remove the illegal connections in such areas. CEO of City Power Lerato Setshedi explained, “Besides causing overloading, equipment failure and unplanned power interruptions, illegal connections disrupt the lives of loyal and paying customers, lead to public fatalities that include loss of children’s lives, make our electricity supply unreliable and result in loss of revenue for the organisation which loses millions annually. Businesses get stuck when there is no electricity.”
City Power added that these illegal connections do not only happen in the informal settlements as they have seen an increase in the act in the suburbs as well.
