City Power has won a prestigious award.
On 18 May the annual Africa Utility Awards took place in Cape Town. The awards attracts over 6 000 attendees and 80 utilities from across the continent.
City Power won the Power Utility of the Year award. It recognises the power utility in Africa that excels in any one or more of the following fields: service delivery, project roll-out, technology roll-out, revenue protection measures, loss reduction, grid integration and new energy sources, including company contribution to sector growth, demonstrated expenditure reduction, increased capacity to deliver services and revenue collection, completion of infrastructure development or sustainable maintenance projects.
City Power was up against a number of utilities namely Ghana Grid Company Limited, KenGen from Kenya, Kenya Power and Lighting Company Limited and Volta River Authority from Ghana.
“We are pleased that the diligent work that has been done by the City Power team has been recognised and acknowledged. This award is an affirmation of the hard work that has been done by the City Power team and this accolade motivates us to work harder to provide our customers with the superior service they deserve,” said Sicelo Xulu, managing director of City Power.
City Power introduced a range of interventions aimed at curtailing power consumption and lessening the potential for load shedding in its area of supply in Johannesburg. City Power has also developed a load limiting application, a free app that is compatible with Android and iOS operating systems. It alerts residents of load limiting schedules and allows them to disconnect power remotely.
Through the implementation of load limiting, City Power has had to implement only 41 of the 220 requests from Eskom to shed load, thanks to the excess capacity created through load limiting. The entity was also recognised for introducing a solution called ripple control. It disconnects geysers during periods of no power. This solution has gone a long way towards alleviating pressure on the national grid and freed up to 110 MW of electricity.
City Power also came up with technology called time of use, which is a dynamic tariff pricing system which prices electricity at a premium during peak periods when the pressure on the grid is high and at discounted rates during off-peak periods.
“The past three years have been both challenging and exciting, it was a golden era of accolades and recognition for sound leadership and innovation at City Power,” concluded Xulu.
Hloni Motloung from City Power said that besides the challenges of urbanisation and theft of infrastructure, the technologies that City Power introduced are making City Power the leader in the energy space.
Ward 97 Councillor, Jaco Engelbrecht said that he feels that the award is ridiculous as the entity is mismanaged. Ward 101 Councillor, Ralf Bittkau said that he wants to know what the criteria was for the awards. “It obviously was not customer satisfaction, because ask any resident and they would not be happy,” said Councillor Bittkau. He added that it will only get worse.
Ward 88 Councillor, Pat Brugman-Richards said that the City has had non-stop outages. “Let’s hope it gives them the incentive to keep the lights on. They have to maintain things,” said Councillor Richards.
Details: City Power, 011 490 7000.
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