Load-shedding costs City Power R3.6million a day during load-shedding

The City is fairly fluent in conversations about how residents and businesses are suffering because of load-shedding, but in many ways, City Power is too.

As residents are customers of City Power, they are customers of Eskom and pay them a whopping R19 billion a year to keep the lights on. Load-shedding renders them unable to keep their side of the bargain they have with the City of Johannesburg to supply critical resources to residents.

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Spokesperson Isaac Mangena said, “It costs us R3.6 million a day when there is load-shedding which is detrimental to our budgets. These expenses come from damage to transformers when power is restored, substations exploding, our overtime costs skyrocket as operators’ schedules are interrupted, and cables are stolen when it’s dark. The list goes on and on.”

He explained how power outages of this scale have a domino effect on impact for them, businesses, residents, and other customers. “People are going to, and are, losing their livelihoods as operating costs become untenable. Not everyone can afford the exorbitant cost of generators, servicing them, and the never-ending need for fuel.”

He said it is becoming a regular occurrence when City Power tries to contact a customer or business only to find they are no longer there. Perhaps they have moved to a different area, but the fear is they have had to close down.

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“One of our aims is to make the city attractive to investors, but that’s almost impossible to achieve as we are a city without regular power. It’s really tough and the financial hit that so many are facing, it is really distressing.”

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