Cape Town – The City of Cape Town has denied accusations by Eskom that it is one of the municipalities across the country that don’t comply with Eskom's load-shedding instructions.
In a statement, the City said protection of its customers has no impact on the national Eskom grid.
“When the City offers protection to its customers by implementing a stage lower than that of Eskom, it is done by harnessing spare generation capacity from its Steenbras Hydro Pump Station, and not through non-compliance with the implementation of load-shedding as instructed by Eskom.
“For the record, the City complies fully with Eskom’s load-shedding instructions in terms of the national standards (NRS048) for load shedding.
“Furthermore, as mentioned the City is guided by the national standard for load shedding, referred to as Regulation NRS048-9 which sets out the following criteria among others for the implementation of load shedding: The safety of people; the environment; and technical constraints on executing load shedding
“Therefore the City does exclude major hospitals, major central business districts with high concentrations of people and vehicles and areas where there are major crowds gathered for specific events.”
The City said it is at the forefront of energy savings and making its operations more efficient. This, while expanding on its renewable energy focus to diversify the energy mix for cleaner and more secure supply.
On Tuesday, Eskom said some municipalities have not been implementing rolling blackouts and this has contributed to the power utility moving to Stage 4 power cuts.
Eskom chief executive Andre de Ruyter said letters had been drafted to all the affected municipalities to correct the situation with all future blackout scenarios which may occur.
He said the municipalities which Eskom supplies have not fulfilled rolling blackout requirements apart from eThekwini and Buffalo City.
Meanwhile, the Western Cape Disaster Management Centre has said it noted with concern the implementation of Stage 4 load shedding this week, with Stage 3 continuing from today until Saturday.
Local Government, Environmental Affairs and Development Planning MEC Anton Bredell says the ongoing crisis requires the national government to be more open and honest about these challenges.
“On Tuesday Eskom held a detailed public briefing which we hope to see happen more regularly. The public, and especially businesses, require full transparency so that they can plan accordingly.
“We should expect the same from the national government and its ministers, who must also take responsibility and provide daily updates about the progress they are making in addressing South Africa’s energy crisis,” Bredell said.
“We must be able to be better prepared for extended periods of load shedding. At the moment we can’t plan anything and the load shedding stages jump from none to two to four within a matter of minutes. That is a massive problem.”
Bredell said for the economy and government to operate efficiently, it is critical to be able to plan ahead and not be caught out by unexpected power cuts.