Load shedding in Johannesburg is a mess

Does anyone actually know how to handle the power crisis? It certainly doesn’t feel like it.

You can carry out so many maintenance plans, come up with as many so-called solutions as you wish and appoint an electricity minister, but the sad truth is that we are probably many years away from moving away from blackouts, despite the promises.

The only reason Eskom isn’t trending at the moment is that we haven’t experienced load shedding during the festive period. That, of course, could and probably will change in a blink of an eye, especially when businesses start up again in the new year.

And according to an energy analyst The Citizen spoke to this week, whether Eskom or City Power are in control of your load shedding schedule, it makes no difference.

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Tshepo Kgadima said: “There are six million people in Johannesburg, so a great number of those are supplied by City Power, not Eskom, but it makes no difference. It is not surprising that load shedding will be for longer hours but it will be in tandem with Eskom.”

One of the reasons City Power took over the administration of load shedding in Johannesburg last month, was so that they could control the length of the outages – opting for frequent blackout stages of two hours at a time instead of four hours.

But this has been a nightmare with many residents load shed several times a day, including fours every six hours.

While City Power spokesperson Isaac Mangena is adamant the utility have “re-aligned blocks and reconfigured the network” when load shedding kicks in again, the public and experts are not so convinced. Do you blame them?