Cape Town - While bouts of load shedding often create a severe disruption to the lives on South Africans, the City of Cape Town is able to shield its customers from some of the impact.
At present, South Africans are enduring Stage 2 power cuts until Wednesday, as Eskom announced that it had extended load shedding.
The City, however, said that it protects its customers from one stage of load shedding and Cape residents will be on Stage 1 during the day.
The City will keeps residents on Stage 1 until 10pm, and then move to Stage 2 until 6am. After that, Stage 1 will be active again until 10pm.
The City said that it is able to generate additional capacity thanks to the help of the Steenbras Pumped Storage Plant.
Mayco member for Energy and Climate Change, Phindile Maxiti, explained: “The City has always built into its planning some additional reserve capacity that it generates through its Steenbras Hydro Pump Station to assist its customers during load shedding if required and if possible, especially during the daytime, when there is a higher impact on residents and businesses.
“Then at night, the City recovers capacity to ensure that it can assist residents and businesses again during the higher economic impact daytime hours.”
Maxiti added: “This means sometimes City-supplied customers are the only ones in South Africa that do not have load shedding or that are on a lower level of load shedding than other metros or Eskom customers.”
Maxiti said that Cape Town residents were already energy-efficient users due to a dedicated saving electricity campaign that the City has had in place for years.
He also touched on the City’s latest efforts in pushing for procuring power from independent power producers (IPPs) as an alternative to relying on Eskom.
The City last week calling the bouts of Eskom power cuts "unsustainable“, especially as economic growth is now ”more critical than ever”.
It reiterated its call on government to expedite the processes that would enable the procurement from IPPs “so that municipalities such as Cape Town can go forth and start breaking the sole reliance on Eskom for power provision”.
Mayor Dan Plato wrote to Mineral Resources and Energy Minister Gwede Mantashe in January to seek clarity regarding the procurement from IPPs.
Cape Argus