The City of Cape Town is trying its hardest to save its citizens from dreadful load shedding but notes this is not sustainable in the face of Eskom’s dire problems.
Eskom announced load shedding from Sunday, and extended power outages until Saturday because of several breakdowns experienced.
According to the City, during the daytime, where capacity allows, they are currently protecting customers with a stage of load-shedding (Stage 1) while at night, the City is able to postpone the start of load-shedding slightly for City customers to give an extra hour for businesses to operate and people to commute. This all depends on the generation capacity though and it is not a given. However, City customers are often the most protected in South Africa when there is Eskom load-shedding.
“As we can see, the power situation is continually changing due to the problems at Eskom, even from one hour to the next. The City thanks its customers for their understanding. As a well-run city, investment and maintenance in infrastructure is done to ensure that assets such as the Steenbras Hydro Pumped Storage Scheme (SHPS) and gas turbines can be used to assist where possible. The City also uses the SHPS as a way to reduce the tariff impact on customers by typically generating when the Eskom tariff is at the highest, to reduce exposure to the highest Eskom tariff for City customers.
“However, this amount of load-shedding is simply unsustainable. The City continues to call on National Government to expedite the processes related to independent power producers and the City remains committed to do everything in its power to reduce the heavy dependency on Eskom. We have made exciting progress in the independent power own build and procurement journey, but we do need legal clarity from the National Department of Mineral Resources and Energy as to what is allowed and what is not. We still await this,” said the City’s Mayoral Committee Member for Energy and Climate Change, Councillor Phindile Maxiti.
Let us know if your power stays off for longer than the load-shedding schedule.
ALSO READ: Statistics South Africa is on a recruitment drive ahead of population census
