City Power Suspends Load Reduction Until January 2025, SA Weighs In

• City Power announced that it has suspended load reduction until the end of January the following year
• The State-Owned Entity said that residents should be careful to use electricity sparingly to avoid triggering the need for load reduction
• South Africans were not impressed with load reduction and compared load reduction to loadshedding

With nine years of experience, Tebogo Mokwena, a Briefly News current affairs journalist, provided insights into infrastructure challenges and state-owned enterprises in South Africa at Daily Sun and Vutivi Business News.

JOHANNESBURG—City Power has suspended load reduction until January 2025, which Eskom introduced in 2021.

City Power suspends load reduction

City Power posted on its Facebook page and told residents that electricity should be used sparingly to avoid triggering the need to implement load reduction. City Power noted that it will implement load reduction. On 21 December, City Power dealt with 105 outage calls in areas across Johannesburg.

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Recently, Eskom CEO Dan Marokane promised the nation that there would be no loadshedding in December. Eskom is working hard to maintain its current capacity generation level.

What you need to know about load reduction

• Eskom introduced load reduction and explained that it occurred in areas that had illegal connections
• Ekurhuleni residents experienced load reduction in July for the first time, infuriating them
• It also implemented load reduction in parts of Limpopo in July due to the illegal connections burdening the system

South Africans still not impressed

Netizens on Facebook were not pleased, even though load reduction was suspended.

CCMF Checkmate said:

"You could have named it loadshedding lite."

Richard Young asked:

"So, are we back to loadshedding?"

Brian Kritzinger said:

"Remember, boys and girls: they have a 65% tariff demand. If they don't pretend to have a crisis, they won't get it. Typical criminal tactics."

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Loadsheddind suspended for over 260 days

In a related article, Briefly News reported that Eskom celebrated 261 days without loadshedding on 14 December. It also saved R16.46 billion in diesel usage.

It announced in a statement on X that implementing the Generation Recovery Plan contributed to the end of loadshedding. It warned, however, that it was overburdened with issues caused by loadshedding.

Source: Briefly News