City Power is pleading with residents not to panic when they experience recurring electricity disconnections, as they try to reduce electricity consumption.
The utility started rolling out a load limiting solution, in its areas of supply in suburbs of Johannesburg, to prevent the implementation of the early stages of load shedding.
The smart meters that have been uploaded with load limiting technology will be shortened from an average household consumption of 42amps to 21amps.
“This will allow affected households to be able to still run low power consuming appliances such as lights, televisions, and alarm systems,” indicated Hloni Motloung from City Power.
He had advised households to reduce their consumption by switching off non-essential items such as geysers, stoves and pool pumps when they experience disconnections to ensure a steady supply.
Motloung explained load limiting enabled City Power, to accurately identify and ascertain household consumption in real time, in relation to the available generating capacity.
“The deployment will enable City Power to remotely disconnect households that don’t comply with requests to reduce consumption remotely using smart meters,” he said.
He elaborated that households that have excessive consumption would experience repetitive disconnections at five minute intervals for a period of 30 seconds until they have reduced their consumption to required levels.
Non-compliant residents will be disconnected remotely through smart meters.
“If your electricity is disconnecting for a period of 30 seconds, you would need to comply immediately, by switching off your heavy current appliances,” he added.
City Power is planning to have uploaded at least 30 000 smart meters with load limiting capabilities by 31 July and currently over 92 000 smart meters were already installed.
Details: City Power Hloni Motloung 011 490 7627.
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