Johannesburg’s power utility City Power has announced the suspension of load reduction due to a drop in electricity demand during the festive season.

South Africa has had no load shedding for over 200 days, but now the power utility responsible for electricity in the country’s biggest metro said it would suspend load reduction until the end of January 2025.

Load reduction is a tactic employed by electricity producers in smaller, specific areas, where there is insufficient electricity available. It is used to ensure that a transformer’s integrity is not at risk as a result of overloading. During load reduction, similarly with load shedding, that area will lose electricity for several hours to manage demand.

Over the past few days and weeks, many companies, industries, and other energy-consuming entities have shut down operations for the December holidays.

In addition, many residents have traveled away from Johannesburg to spend time with family and friends in other parts of the country and in some cases, the continent, resulting in a marked decrease in electricity consumption across the city, City Power’s spokesperson Isaac Mangena said.

He said the reduction in demand, combined with seasonal factors such as warm weather conditions, has led to lower energy usage levels, allowing City Power to temporarily lift load reduction that had been implemented to safeguard the electricity grid.

“The load reduction programme was introduced due to critically high electricity consumption levels, putting immense strain on our network infrastructure.”

Mangena said targeted load reduction measures were applied in high-density and affluent areas where load demand was extremely high.

“These actions were necessary to prevent potential overloads and ensure the stability of our electricity supply.”

Mangena said while load reduction has been suspended, other measures such as tackling illegal connections will continue.

“We recognise the difficulties that load reduction has placed on our customers particularly during thepeak demand periods, however as mentioned previously, that extreme measure was taken as the last resort to mitigate against possible grid collapse, whose consequences would have been far moredamaging,” he added.

While the two-hourly load reduction has been halted, Mangena urged customers to use electricity sparingly, cautioning that should the be a consumption increase, City Power will be left with no option but to reinstate load reduction even during this period.

”As we move into the new year, the power entity anticipates that electricity demand will rise again, as industries resume operations, schools reopen, and residents return to Johannesburg. Given this expected increase in consumption, we want to inform our customers that load reduction measures may be reintroduced from the end of January 2025.”

He added that any reintroduction of load reduction may occur under extreme circumstances.

“It could be implemented with little to no prior notice, should it be necessary to protect the grid from potential collapse,” Mangena said.

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