Joburg residents not spared Stage 6 loadshedding as Eskom throws South Africa into weekend of darkness

City Power which took over the mass planned outages from Eskom, indicated that Joburg residents won’t be spared from long blackouts following the implementation of Stage 6 by Eskom.

City Power has been implementing its own power cuts outside Eskom’s schedule for almost a month now.

However, after the embattled power utility Eskom announced a shortage in generating capacity and emergency reserves – which forced a weekend of Stage 6 loadshedding – City Power said it will also have to make some adjustments.

“As opposed to encountering four consecutive hours of blackouts on two or more occasions in a day, City Power has spread out those four hours, to provide customers with two-hours of relief in between,” City Power said in a statement.

The utility said the move would enable those working from home or relying on life supporting medical equipment to quickly recharge their devices and continue with minimal interruption.

Furthermore, the decision to eliminate the four hours of uninterrupted loadshedding was informed by a number of factors.

“One of those factors is that, previously during Stage 6 loadshedding, we encountered high number of cases of cable theft and vandalism.

“The other factor is that City Power has several substations that are remotely operated. With four hour straight of loadshedding, batteries that power the remote communication system run out.

“This often results in some customers being restored late, because operators have to drive longer distances to various substations,” said the power utility.

The power utility said its currently working on a formula that will eliminate the two-hour break when there is higher stages.

“We expect an announcement on further changes to the current loadshedding schedule to be made in the next 2-week,” read the statement.