Here’s how often the light will now be off under City Power’s load shedding schedule

Johannesburg’s City Power said it has been revising its load shedding schedule to lessen the impact of the power cuts on residents of the city.

This comes after the frequent bouts of two-hour power cuts in a day meant to happen only once a week during stage 1 and 2 load shedding.

Complaints

Spokesperson Isaac Mangena said they have received complaints about the new schedule, which it drew up after taking over load shedding from Eskom.

“There has been some outcry from certain customers complaining of instances where certain blocks experienced frequent two-hour load shedding squeezed in the space of six to eight hours. We have promised to address this technical glitch.

“We have been working hard to revise the load shedding schedule to lessen the impact of the two hours off, two hours on problem which we described as a temporary pain. In the new load shedding schedule, customers will enjoy between six to fourteen hours of uninterrupted electricity supply between stages 1 and 4.”

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Schedule

Mangena added that the two-hour “break” problem will be completely done away with during these stages.

Stage 1

With the new load shedding schedule, four blocks will not be shed in stage 1 per day with no repetition of the blocks in the same stage.

Stage 2

Eight blocks will be shed twice a day and the other eight blocks will encounter load shedding three times in the same period.

Stage 3

Twelve blocks will be load shed twice, while the remaining four will be off three times.

Stage 4

All blocks will be load shed three times, giving all residents a minimum of a six-hour break in between the power cuts.

Higher stages

“From stage 5 up to 8, the two-hour break will re-emerge. The higher the stages, the more often the problem will recur in the load shedding cycle.

“Customers who are load shed twice a day will be given 14 hours of uninterrupted power supply after that. This is an ongoing fine-tuning process which will improve with time,” Magena said.

Mangena said up to four blocks may also encounter four-hour power cuts due to the overlapping days and times which happen from 10pm until 2am during the higher stages of load shedding

Mangena said City Power is working on solutions for higher load shedding stages.

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