Residents and businesses in Johannesburg may soon find load-shedding times reduced from the current four-hour blocks, to the two-hour blocks imposed elsewhere in South Africa.
In a tweet on Monday, state-owned power utility Eskom said: “Due to the interconnectedness with @CityPowerJhb 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.”
The utility added that it hopes to have an “update on this change during the course of the week”.
Most parts of South Africa experience load shedding in two-hour blocks, rather than the four-hour blocks (plus up to 30 minutes of restoration time) implemented by City Power.
The long outages in Johannesburg can prove crippling for businesses. For example, when load shedding is implemented at midday, power is only restored at between 4pm and 4.30pm, near the end of the business day.
Of course, shorter load-shedding periods would no doubt mean more frequent power outages, as is the case elsewhere in South Africa.
News of the possible changes to Johannesburg’s load-shedding schedules comes as Eskom struggles to keep the lights on. The company warned on Sunday that it would extend power cuts into Monday after delays in restarting generation units at some of its coal-fired power stations. — (c) 2021 NewsCentral Media
