Cape Town - As residents endure the fourth consecutive week of load shedding, some have shared that their electricity bills remained the same while others noticed slightly reduced electricity bills that might be the result of the continued power outages.
Energy Mayco member Beverley van Reenen said: “It is likely or reasonable to think that if customers have reduced their usage because of load-shedding, their usage per unit could be reduced and thus the price of electricity.
“However, it must be noted that it is also likely that customers would use the same amount of electricity at another stage to make up for the time they have been off. This could balance out the period of not using electricity due to load shedding.”
Van Reenen said there has been a small reduction in the City electricity consumption as seen in June 2022 for residential customers, but it was hard to say how much of this was as a result of load-shedding.
Stop CoCT founder Sandra Dickson said: “My electricity usage decreased from 14 units per day to 11 units per day for the months of June/July. The 9.5% increase in City electricity tariffs probably kept the rand value of electricity bills the same as one may use less units during this period of perpetual load shedding, but the bill remains the same due to the tariff increase.
“During the winter months in general, customers tend to use more electricity and added to this, there are still generally more customers in a household due to work flexibility, which impacts electricity usage – this must all be considered against the background of the annual increase in electricity prices, largely Eskom-driven, that customers would see in their July bills,” Van Reenen said.
Van Reenan added that it was always possible to reduce costs if one reduced usage and used less than 600 kWh per month. Given the way that the billing system worked in the City, she said any reduction in residential load would only be materially noticeable at the end of July.
Meanwhile, Eskom announced that load shedding would continue to be implemented at Stage 3 and no longer Stage 4 as previously communicated.
The power utility said the overnight load shedding at Stage 2 would be reduced to Stage 1 from midnight until 5am.