Eskom’s been playing a bit of hot-and-cold with regards to load shedding as of late, so in case you missed the memo (and if you’re a Johannesburg resident you may well have) most of South Africa is back on Stage 2 until 21:00 Tuesday. Ostensibly, at least. Given Eskom’s track record that could very well be extended.
But not Johannesburg, whose residents will be happy to hear that City Power has declared that there will be no load shedding for them.
Johannesburg has the power
City Power, Joburg’s municipal power utility, made it known via Twitter over the weekend that no, actually, it would not be load shedding.
Mzanzi was recently able to secure an additional 220 MW worth of power from Kelvin Power, a private station, which is enough to exempt it from Stage 1 and 2 load shedding.
“When the city first reached out to Eskom to indicate our additional supply capacity, we were asked for proof in this regard, which we accordingly presented,” said mayor Mpho Moerane in a statement. Eskom apparently didn’t respond before announcing Stage 2 load shedding on Saturday evening. Hence the City of Joburg’s defiant tone
“If how Eskom treats the city is anything to go by, then it is understandable why Johannesburg residents have so many complaints about the national utility’s customer service,” Moerane went on to say.
“It looks like Eskom has no intention of serving the people of Johannesburg better after we as a municipality have done everything within our reach to ensure security of power supply.”
The City of Joburg isn’t the only thing capable of generating additional power to circumvent load shedding. Back in June President Cyril Ramaphosa announced that citizens and businesses could begin generating up to 100MW of their own power, up from a measly 1MW, to fend off the darkness and lift some of the strain off of the grid.