Eskom takes control of major South African city’s load-shedding
Eskom has revoked the City of Ekurhuleni’s (CoE) management of the municipality’s rotational power cuts after it failed to load-shed customers as instructed in the National Rationalised Specifications (NRS) Code of Practice.
As a result, the state-owned power utility started directly load-shedding Ekurhuleni customers on Tuesday, 25 July 2023.
“The CoE failed to comply by not adhering to the NRS 048-9:2019 code of practice, which requires electricity distributor licence holders to reduce load during a declaration of a system emergency,” it said.
“The decision to take over load-shedding in Ekurhuleni follows monitoring and analysis conducted by Eskom, which indicate that the CoE is not reducing the load as per NRS 048-9:2019.”
The Code of Practice for load-shedding stipulates an amount of megawatts that must be shed to ensure the power utility can meet peak demand and protect the integrity of the national power grid.
Eskom said it had engaged the municipality several times regarding its failure to load-shed its customers.
It isn’t the first time the state-owned power utility has had to take over the role of load-shedding CoE customers.
“The power utility has taken over this role of load-shedding the CoE’s customers following its contravention of the requirements of the standard in the past,” said Eskom.
“At the time, the CoE was only permitted to load-shed all the substations that feed critical loads. Subsequently, upon the CoE’s request, Eskom handed over the implementation of load-shedding of all the CoE customers to the municipality.”
The power utility said it is aware of the technical challenges the Ekurhuleni faces in executing load-shedding. However, it didn’t elaborate on what these are.
However, it has been left with no choice but to implement the rotational power cuts on its behalf, as failure to enforce load-shedding on a municipal level puts the grid’s stability at risk, which could lead to higher stages of load-shedding.
“Residential and industrial customers from the City of Ekurhuleni are urged to contact the municipality directly for the City’s load-shedding schedule or to visit their website,” it added.
Kempton Park, Ekurhuleni
Eskom’s metro and municipal crackdown
Earlier this month, the North Gauteng High Court ordered the Emfuleni Local Municipality to hand over eight big power users’ electricity services to Eskom. The power utility welcomed the ruling.
The municipality encompasses Vereeniging, Vanderbijlpark, and the Sebokeng and Evaton townships. The court found the municipality was in contempt of a previous court order handed down in 2018.
“The court ordered the ELM to appoint Eskom as its service delivery agent to perform all functions and services relating to the municipality’s electricity business on behalf of the municipality,” said Eskom.
“This order was not adhered to due to non-compliance by the municipality.”
The court determined that ELM had collected approximately R4.5 billion from its customers for electricity services. However, it failed to pay Eskom for it.
Eskom and the customers approached the court to seek relief on the matter in March 2023.
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