Eskom granted “some reprieve” from load shedding to City Power, Johannesburg’s municipal electricity company, to help it deal with repairs following floods.
Earlier this week, the city asked Eskom for a three-day exemption from continuing outages to allow City Power to stabilise supply to residents following heavy rains that damaged infrastructure, particularly on the West Rand and in Soweto.
“Given the urgent need for City Power to attend to the widespread and escalating faults, the entity has expressed its concern that load shedding is not only causing to additional faults and stress on the network, but also preventing the entity from being able to effectively attend to the outages and to stabilise the situation,” the city said in a statement on 12 December. “It is a simple fact that power lines and infrastructure cannot be worked on when there is no power.”
Read: Joburg seeks three-day exemption from Eskom load shedding
Eskom on Thursday said in a statement: “Eskom grants City Power some reprieve from load shedding in areas that experienced significant loss of electricity in large parts of Johannesburg. The reprieve follows the utility’s request for areas that were severely affected by the recent floods and storms, which resulted in loss of electricity, to be excluded from load shedding.”
Eskom suggested in its statement that the reprieve has now ended. “Through collaboration between the two entities and in accordance with Nersa regulations, Eskom was able to assist the city during this period.” — © 2022 NewsCentral Media