City Power has launched an initiative that it believes – with public participation and cooperation – will combat load shedding across the City. Load limiting is the new initiative that the City has introduced and will be rolled out across all regions.
Launching the initiative, Executive Mayor Parks Tau said, as the economic hub of the country, Johannesburg could not afford the rolling blackouts that were experienced recently. “This initiative will help mitigate electricity supply challenges and will positively impact on the economy.” On the same note, Tau highlighted that residents needed to play their part by improving their energy usage habits. “The success of this technology is also dependent on communities as they need to be participants for the project to succeed,” he added.
Explaining how the project will work, managing director for City Power Sicelo Xulu said whenever the Eskom power grid gets under pressure, City Power will send out SMSs to customers who already have smart meters to reduce their power consumption and this will avoid load shedding. “Households that don’t comply will be remotely disconnected and this will avoid compliant customers from load shedding,” said Xulu. He continued, “After the consumer has received an SMS, the consumer will have 30 seconds to switch off appliances after which the power will go off. This will continue to happen until the consumer heeds the instruction to reduce their power consumption. Once the consumer has reduced the load, power will come back up.” Residents who fail to comply after five attempts will be kept off till such time that the power grid has recovered from strain.
At this point, load limiting will be implemented for residential customers, but Xulu said there were talks and interventions between the City and businesses to see how commercial customers can improve their electricity consumption which will ensure that lights are always kept on in Johannesburg.
With the 65 000 smart meters already installed by the power utility, it will be able to save 153 MW and by October this year, they target to have rolled out
130 000 smart meters.
