City Power Johannesburg says it has now revised its load shedding schedule, which has become a source of public outcry in recent weeks.
When it took over the load shedding schedule in Joburg, City Power said its implementation would see residents only subjected to two-hour blackouts at a time—even on Stage 5—under the new schedule.
However, Joburg residents found that the City Power scheduling subjected residents to only having a two-hour break between load shedding which created unhappiness among residents.
City Power spokesperson Isaac Mangena said the new schedule would see residents enjoy a six to 14-hour break of uninterrupted electricity supply in worst-case scenarios between Stages 1 and 4.
The updated schedule was published on Wednesday.
Mangena explained that when they took over the management of the rollout of load shedding in Johannesburg from Eskom, they immediately eliminated the four consecutive hours of blackouts up to Stage 8.
However, this created “a new phenomenon where the same four hours are then squeezed into a 6–8-hour time frame, giving customers a mere two-hour break in between at least once a week for some”.
“In our current load shedding programme, which will be phased out, the two-hour break problem comes into effect from as early as Stage 2, and it increases in frequency when Eskom heightens stages of load shedding. The entity has finally resolved this glitch to some extent,” he said.
Mangena explained that the two-hour break would now be addressed.
He explained that:
– Four blocks will not be shed in Stage 1 per day, with no repetition of the blocks in the same stage.
– In Stage 2, eight blocks will be shed twice in a day, and the other eight blocks will encounter load shedding three times in the same period.
– In Stage 3, 12 blocks will be load shed twice, while the remaining four will be off three times.
– In Stage 4, all blocks will be load shed three times, giving all customers a minimum of six-hours in between.
– For customers who are load shed twice in a day, they will experience 14 hours of uninterrupted power supply.
Mangena said the two-hour break for load shedding would re-emerge when the country was experiencing heightened levels of load shedding at Stages 5 to 8.
“The higher the stages, the more often that problem will re-occur in the load shedding cycle.
In addition to that challenge, we also like to inform customers that up to four blocks may encounter, on a few occasions, four hours of straight load shedding due to the overlapping into a different day,” he said, adding that the team was still working on finding solutions for the higher stages of load shedding.
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