It appears that if you ask Eskom nicely enough, it’ll turn off load shedding just for you. Well, that’s been the case for the City of Joburg. Following the City’s request earlier this week, Eskom has granted Joburg a three-day break from load shedding to perform some much-needed maintenance.
Pretty please?
Eskom grants City Power some reprieve from loadshedding pic.twitter.com/o8tDYpu2Ku
— Eskom Hld SOC Ltd (@Eskom_SA) December 15, 2022
“Eskom grants City Power some reprieve from load shedding in areas that experienced a significant loss of electricity in large parts of Johannesburg,” Eskom said. “The reprieve follows the utility’s request for areas that were severely affected by recent floods and storms, which resulted in the loss of electricity, to be excluded from load shedding.
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The mayor of Joburg, Mpho Phalatse said her city was facing “near insurmountable” challenges following the extremely heavy rains that hit Joburg and other parts of Gauteng in the past week. She believes that the constant rolling blackouts and continuous thunderstorms are only adding to the faults on the network. It can’t fix the issues either – until the rain eases and the City has a reliable power source.
“While progress is being made with limited resources in addressing the thousands of outages that have occurred since last week’s inclement weather and flooding, continuous rainfall means more faults are being logged every hour,” the city said.
Hopefully, the City of Joburg can work quickly, as thunderstorms are expected all weekend.
The rest of us aren’t quite as “lucky” as Joburg. We’re stuck with Stage 4 until Sunday. After that, we’ll be switched to Stage 3 at 5AM. At least, that’s what Eskom tells us. Don’t get your hopes up too high.
