Sindisiwe Mchunu, administrator at Cell C, struggles to find a book while doing her report in the dark at home in Ormonde as load shedding hits some parts of Joburg South. File Picture: Bongiwe Mchunu / Independent Newspapers
City Power has taken over the load shedding implementation in Johannesburg, but there have been some teething problems that have caused some angst for residents.
Last week, Eskom and City Power announced that the local power utility would be taking over its own load shedding implementation in a move that would see residents only subjected to two-hour blackouts at a time - even on Stage 5 - under the new schedule.
However, the implementation of the new schedules has not gone down as smoothly as planned, as some load shedding blocks were being shed at a far higher rate than others, with the load shedding not being spread out as planned.
Some blocks in the new schedule were showing two two-hourly load shedding blackouts in the space of about six hours, while others were showing no load shedding at all in similar periods.
City Power spokesperson Isaac Mangena has apologised to residents, particularly in the northern Joburg suburbs, after errors in the implementation of the new load schedule.
Mangena has explained: “We have 16 blocks of load shedding, and a block will only repeat after all the blocks have been exhausted in a single day.
“For example, if you were shed at 8am to 10am in Block 4, the other 15 blocks will need to be shed before we return to Block 4 again.
“We suspect it's part of the bigger error which we are fixing. We apologise to the customers for the confusion,” he said.
He said they were busy addressing technical errors, which were likely caused by the overlapping transition from the old schedule to the new one.
Mangena said they were confident this would be addressed by Monday night.
IOL