Staff Reporter.
Eskom is working with Johannesburg City Power to reduce the duration of load-shedding in Johannesburg.
City Power customers in Johannesburg are the only ones to experience four-hour blocks of continuous load-shedding, the power utility said in a tweet.
“Due to the interconnectedness with City Power systems, Eskom is engaging with City Power to reduce the duration of load-shedding as only areas in Johannesburg are currently experiencing four-hour load-shedding,” Eskom said.
“We hope to have an update on this change during the course of the week.”
In other areas, load-shedding is usually broken up into smaller blocks of around two hours each to reduce the maximum extended downtime caused by the rolling blackouts.
In Johannesburg, however, consumers often experience four-and-a-half-hour blocks of load-shedding at a time – even under stage 2.
With the COVID-19 pandemic forcing many South Africans to work from home, this extended downtime could be detrimental to professionals working remotely in Johannesburg – especially if they do not have any power backup systems.
Eskom had originally planned to stop load-shedding at 23:00 on Sunday 17 January, but it has been forced to continue implementing rolling blackouts due to its failure to return two generation units at the Kusile power station to service.
“Over the past 24 hours, Eskom teams were able to return a generation unit each at the Kriel, Grootvlei and Duvha power stations to service,” it said on Sunday.
“Despite stringent measures to manage the impact of the second wave of the pandemic on the operations, we are experiencing some impact on operations, including suppliers.”