City of Ekurhuleni to get revised load shedding schedules

The City of Ekurhuleni is in the process of taking over the management of all stages of load shedding from Eskom.

Once this process has been finalised, revised load shedding schedules will be published on the City of Ekurhuleni website, reports Kempton Express.

Until then, said Themba Gadebe, spokesperson for the metro, the current schedules, drawn up in 2014, were the applicable ones.

When these schedules were drawn up six years ago, Kemptonians had the luxury of benefiting from geyser ripple control during morning and evening peaks. During these peaks, geysers in Kempton Park fitted with a geyser ripple control device were switched off from 7.30am to 10.30am and 5.30pm to 8.30pm to reduce the demand.

That allowed the metro to skip two load shedding cycles in Kempton Park.

Other centres in the metro that also benefited from this were Edenvale, Bedfordview, Benoni and Daveyton.

However, this has stopped but was never communicated by the City.

When asked by Kempton Express whether ripple control was still being implemented, the answer was a short “No”, with no explanation on when it was terminated or what the City was doing during those hours of load shedding.

Looking at the current schedule, no areas should be switched off. It is not yet clear if certain areas have been selected to go off during these times, or if the metro is simply not implementing load shedding during those times. Further queries regarding this had also not been answered at the time of going to print.

According to Gadebe, Eskom prescribes the load shedding stage and required load curtailment.

“Based on these figures and the time of day, the City initiates appropriate load shedding.”

Eskom requires a load decrease of five per cent in incremental stages.

Gadebe said the metro allows a 30-minute overlap between blocks to allow for switching to take place. The periods at which load shedding take place are distributed equally across the different areas and there are no areas in the City that are not affected.

“The City is always looking at ways to improve and reduce inconveniences to customers. This includes revision of operational and load shedding schedules,” he added.

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