Load-shedding in Ekurhuleni now up to Eskom, after metro disobeys

Effective from Tuesday, Eskom has been directly implementing load-shedding on City of Ekurhuleni customers, in all the substations previously handed over to the municipality to manage.

This is because the municipality 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, Eskom said on Wednesday.

“The decision to take over load-shedding in Ekurhuleni follows monitoring and analysis conducted by Eskom which indicate the City of Ekurhuleniis not reducing the load as per NRS 048-9:2019. Eskom has on numerous occasions engaged the municipality regarding its failure to load-shed its customers,” Eskom said. 

The power utility said noncompliance by the municipality put further strain on the already constrained national grid.

“Failure to implement load-shedding by municipalities affects the integrity and stability of the grid, which may lead to higher stages of load-shedding.”

The city said it would engage with Eskom not to shed some of its critical substations in areas with a high concentration of large industries because that would affect the economy of the region and threaten jobs.

“We are an economic hub and we are therefore looking forward to positive engagements with the power utility, bearing in mind the valuable contribution of industry to the economy,” said metro spokesperson Zweli Dlamini. 

Dlamini said the city would propose load curtailment during negotiations with Eskom.

Load curtailment is load reduction obtained from customers who can reduce demand on instruction. This also means in the event of an emergency declaration, industrial customers must be able to reduce their load by a certain percentage. 

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