• After failing to comply with the call to loadshed its customers, the City of Ekurhuleni will no longer be in control of when the power is cut.
• The municipality has said it will engage with Eskom in a bid to not shed certain substations that industrial customers are connected to.
• CoE further said it would recommend load curtailment instead of outright power cuts in negotiations with Eskom.

The City of Ekurhuleni (CoE) has failed to comply with Eskom’s orders to loadshed its customers and now the municipality has lost the ability to control when the power is cut.

This is according to Eskom which on Wednesday said that as of Tuesday it would be in control of all substations that it had previously given the municipality control of.

“The CoE 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. The decision to take over the loadshedding in Ekurhuleni follows monitoring and analysis conducted by Eskom which indicate that the CoE is not reducing the load as per NRS 048-9:2019,” the utility wrote.

Eskom says that it has engaged the municipality multiple times regarding its failure to loadshed its customers. While the utility acknowledges that CoE has technical problems implementing loadshedding, it also highlights that this lack of power cuts puts strain on an already strained grid.

The municipality has acknowledged Eskom’s decision and has said it will be “engaging Eskom not to shed some of our critical substations in areas with a high concentration of large industries, because this will not only impact the economy of the region but also threatens jobs.”

The municipality says that it will be proposing load curtailment in its negotiations with Eskom. Load curtailment would allow industrial customers to reduce their load by a certain percentage rather than losing power altogether.

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

Eskom is currently implementing Stage 4 power cuts until further notice.