City Power outlines plans to minimise load-shedding through load-limiting

The load limiting system and ripple control at the substations are some of City Power's plans to mitigate the impact of loadshedding on the residents of Johannesburg.

City Power outlined its energy plan at its headquarters in Booysens on Wednesday afternoon as the country is experiencing exacerbated stages of loadshedding.

The City of Johannesburg's power utility introduced 10 programmes that are part of the energy plan to ensure that they are less reliant on Eskom and could prevent residents from facing a total blackout during the stages of loadshedding.

City Power CEO, Tshifularo Mashava, said the plan will allow them to firstly loadlimit as opposed to loadshedding in the lower stages like from stage one up to stage three, where residents wouldn't experience loadshedding in the City of Johannesburg.

"Loadlimiting means that we reduce your usage at home, instead of you having the luxury of your geyser, stove or your air conditioner on at the same time, it will then be limited to use," she said.

The city is currently rolling smart meters and communication gadgets that will allow them to be able to see what residents are using at the same time and be able to warn them to reduce their usage.

Should customers not comply, their electricity will trip within 30 seconds interval on a five times cycle, and eventually goes off for 30 minutes until customers comply and switch off the high electricity usage appliances.

"We will run that literally for everyone at the same time, then it will allow us to be able to give Eskom the MW that they require from a loadshedding perspective but without us actual doing loadshedding, but rather doing loadlimiting," she said.

She said when the loadshedding stages escalate to high stages, they would definitely loadshed but at least would be loadshedding at lower stages as opposed to high stages.

"That is the benefit. We are already in winter, winter is upon us, and it is for that reason that we are doing what we can to fast track our plans and proof of concept is done, and I think it is just a matter of rolling out," she said.

Addressing the media, Mashava said the energy plans would bring relief to the residents as they've had many complaints from their customers that they couldn't use electricity as they are usually loadshed in the morning and in the evening during peak time when they want to use electricity.

"We have prepared new schedules, and those schedules are currently under discussions and the MMC will be signing those off," she said, adding that as soon as they are signed off, they would announce when they are starting with less duration and less frequency of loadshedding, from stage one all the way to stage eight.

"But for a project of this magnitude, we envisage a sixmonth period for it to actually being in completion – so unfortunately we are only starting during winter, which means we will get some of these benefits more during the summer months.

"The good news is that these are not ideas, these are not plans, these are actually at an execution phase," she said.

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