Johannesburg - The City of Joburg has offered big businesses an early Christmas gift by exempting them from continuous blackouts which lead to job shedding and disinvestment in the economy of Joburg.
The incentives, which are likely to come into effect in a few days, were announced by the City of Joburg’s MMC for Environment and Infrastructure Services Jack Sekwaila following his meeting with top brass of City Power on Thursday.
Sekwaila said the City of Joburg would exclude key customers, essential services and some businesses from load shedding in an effort to protect livelihoods, attract investment and increase the economy within the City, where network configurations allowed.
Sekwaila said the move, which would start gradually from early June, would go a long way towards saving much-needed jobs and ensuring businesses remained invested in the City.
“The City has the responsibility to attract investments, retain those already operating within Joburg, and secure the jobs for our residents. This hasn't been possible with the relentless load shedding that has heavily impacted the economic activity within the City, leading to some businesses closing down while others emigrated to other provinces where reliable electricity supply is guaranteed.
“Most small businesses were forced to close due to the impact of load shedding while still recovering from Covid-19. These plans will go a long way in ensuring we keep the economic activity going on in the midst of this gruelling load shedding," Sekwaila said.
He said already most large power users and key business customers were excluded from load shedding through the load curtailment agreements with the companies. Other businesses, especially those in industrial areas that employed many people, would be gradually excluded owing to the reconfiguration of the network and other processes including the rolling out of energy techniques.
Sekwaila said the new arrangement would see many other essential services added to the load shedding exclusion, and that the City was already exempting most health and water services following a request by the government last year.
“We may not right away be able to exclude all at once because of the embedded nature of the network,” he said.
Sekwaila said the changes came as City Power worked towards implementing a new load-shedding schedule which would see the 4-hour schedule currently used from Stage 4 reduced to a 2-hour schedule throughout up until Stage 8.
City Power technicians and engineers have been working hard for the past few months, conducting simulations and looking for ways to reduce the burden of load shedding on customers, the infrastructure and resources.
City Power CEO Tshifularo Mashava said: “To achieve standardisation, City Power identified 16 blocks that can shed the required load per block. It is important to mention that the substations serving the Reuven, Hursthill, Alexandra and Inner City areas are remotely controlled by the City Power control room during load shedding. The substations in all other areas are still manually operated and measures are under way, with budgets committed to ensure that those substations in other SDC are operated remotely.
“With the higher stages of load shedding which are becoming our lived reality now, the lives of our customers are heavily disrupted. The new schedule will ensure that our customers no longer endure many hours of load shedding, with others shed for four hours in one go. This schedule will reduce the frequency of customers being shed and in addition, blocks will not get shed at the same time for the same stage on consecutive days. In simple terms, our customers will be on for longer than it is now, especially in lower stages.”
City Power was finalising plans and consultations with Eskom to ensure a smooth transition and the full implementation of the new load-shedding schedule by early to mid-June, which would see City Power assume complete responsibility for operating all of its substations during load shedding.
“We will be able to ensure an equitable distribution of the load shedding amount on customers and also ensure that we provide Eskom only with the exact amount of load required in each load-shedding cycle,” Mashava added.
The design of the new load-shedding schedule achieves the following:
– Eliminates the 4-hour duration in all stages and maintains 2 hours (plus 30 minutes) up to Stage 8.
– In a 4- or 5-day Stage 1 or 2 load shedding, a customer may be shed only once per day.
– After a block is restored, there is a 2-hour reprieve before the next scheduled time.
– A block is scheduled in a zigzag fashion alternating between lower and higher stages in the 24-hour period. This reduces frequency in comparison to the current load-shedding schedule.
– The maximum duration the block can be switched off in 24 hours is 12 hours or 6 times in higher stages like Stage 8.
Given that it is 16 blocks, 2 hours per time slot in 24 hours and 31 days, the algorithm is designed like a square to ensure fairness to all blocks. This explains the 50% chance of enjoying less frequent and 50% of worst-case load shedding depending on the day.
“It is for this reason that we needed to exempt the industrial loads to avoid the worst-case scenarios.
We will also gradually start excluding some businesses and essential services from load shedding, and City Power will start with network reconfiguration in the coming months which will enable us to exclude most embedded essential services within our network,” Sekwaila said