By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
State owned power utility Eskom has taken over loadshedding in the City of Ekurhuleni (CoE), saying the municipality failed to implement power cuts.
“Eskom has on numerous occasions engaged the municipality regarding its failure to loadshed its customers,” the utility said in a statement.
“The decision to take over load shedding in Ekurhuleni follows monitoring and analysis conducted by Eskom, which indicate that the City of Ekurhuleni is not reducing the load as per (the regulations),” it said.
Eskom said it had engaged the municipality on numerous occasions regarding its failure to load shed customers, and so now the action will be under the power utility’s control, effective Tuesday, 24 July.
The city was previously only permitted to load shed all substations that feed critical loads. However, upon its request, Eskom handed over the implementation of load shedding of all customers in the municipality.
“Although Eskom notes the city’s technical challenges in executing load shedding, it is left with no choice but to implement load shedding for the city as its non-compliance puts further strain on the already contained national grid,” Eskom said.
“Failure to implement load shedding by municipalities affects the integrity and stability of the grid, which may lead to higher stages of load shedding.”
Eskom was forced to push load shedding to stage 5 on Monday as pressure mounted on the grid. Load shedding has been reduced to stage 4, but is sticking to that level indefinitely.
Eskom appealed to members of the public to continue to assist in reducing load shedding by curbing their power usage.
It said that it would continue to load shed customers in the City of Ekurhuleni based on the municipality’s load shedding schedules.