• Load reduction has the potential to severely affect Johannesburg’s businesses, especially in the industrial sector.
• Johannesburg’s businesses supply around 15 percent of the country’s GDP and employ over two million people.
• But if residents use voltage-reducing equipment, demand can be more easily managed and load reduction curtailed.

Despite Johannesburg being the wealthiest province in South Africa, the city is plagued by ailing electricity infrastructure in desperate need of refit. So much so that the winter demand has placed such a strain on the city’s power grid that City Power, the company in charge of the electricity, has had to implement load reduction.

Like loadshedding, load reduction is timeous blackouts across certain areas of the city in order to reduce the load on the system and therefore protect the grid from a total failure, placing all of Johannesburg in the dark.

However, the timing of load reduction could not have been worse, as with loadshedding finally being kept at bay businesses in Johannesburg, especially the local and small ones, were looking to use the newfound stability to regain growth.

Now load reduction provides yet another blockage to these businesses, especially in Johannesburg’s key industrial sector, where power outages waste huge amounts of time that could be used instead to boost the economic capital’s GDP.

“For a number of companies operating in Johannesburg’s industrial sector, the switch-off of machinery could render them unable to operate for extended periods as it can take equipment anywhere from a few hours to more than 24 hours to return to operation,” explains Dr Andrew Dickson, engineering executive at CBI-electric: low voltage, a local supplier of low voltage electrical distribution, protection and control equipment.

“With outages now occurring multiple times a day in parts of Johannesburg, this will bring business to a standstill and could even force several companies to close,” Dickson adds in an email to Hypertext.

“Moreover, this could have significant knock-on effects, especially as the city’s businesses enable it to contribute around 14.9% to the national Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and 40% to the Gauteng province, while also employing approximately 2.13 million people.”

City Power warned residents that it would have to implement drastic measures around a month before launching load reduction, as the Johannesburg grid was severely constrained. The company has been pleaded with residents to lower their electricity consumption in order to reduce the need for the rolling blackouts.

Customers can rid themselves of load reduction by cleverly reducing power consumption

Dickson says his company can help businesses with this and in doing so, the power returns back to the hands of the consumer.

“The first step should be measuring how much power is being consumed as well as when, where and why. This information can then be used to build a plan that takes energy demand patterns into account. For example, this could help companies change when they use the most power by restructuring their operations, determine which processes should happen when in order to minimise peaks and dips in daily power usage and adjust how shift structures work,” he says.

“Using timers or load controllers to schedule when loads turn on or off could also help to reduce electricity consumption,” adds Dr Dickson.

“These could be deployed to prevent systems like air conditioners and hydro boils from running unnecessarily after business hours or to limit how long household geysers are switched on. Load controllers, combined with room occupancy sensors, could also be used to switch off electrical equipment in unoccupied offices or meeting rooms so that power is only consumed when and where it’s needed.”

Dickson believes that businesses should change their consumption pattern if they want to reduce the strain on the local grid, but for us, this places the onus on the paying customer to once again take responsibility for a problem that should not be in their hands.

Yes, voltage-reducing equipment can reduce load reduction, but it is City Power that is at fault for being unable to replace ailing infrastructure in time.

[Image – CC 0 Pixabay]