The city councils of Cape Town and Johannesburg have both deployed additional personnel to ensure the speedy resolution of outages and faults, especially during peak hours, following Eskom’s announcement that it was implementing Stage 6 loadshedding as of December 7.
The State-owned power utility has warned of scheduled blackouts of up to 12 hours a day as energy capacity drops owing to lagging repairs at its fleet of coal-fired power stations.
City of Johannesburg Environment and Infrastructure Services MMC Michael Sun explains that lengthy power outages put increased pressure on infrastructure, as ageing networks are simply not designed to be powered up and down and withstand the impacts of rush current several times a day without running the risk of severe technical faults.
He adds that controlled blackouts also provide a handy schedule from which cable thieves are able to operate without running the risk of high-voltage electrocution.
Sun advises citizens to not overload the system by immediately activating all appliances when the power comes back on, and the same goes for businesses.
In turn, Cape Town Safety and Security MMC JP Smith suggests that citizens ensure that all non-essential appliances are switched off before loadshedding starts and to adhere to four-way stop rules at intersections in the absence of traffic lights.
The City of Cape Town has convened a multi-departmental Disaster Coordinating Team to do all it can to protect critical infrastructure, including the electricity network, and safeguard essential basic services and safety operations.
The city is also using its Steenbras hydro pumped station to generate spare capacity to protect infrastructure; however, it becomes increasingly difficult to generate spare capacity at the higher stages of loadshedding.
Additionally, the Cape Town government has activated the city’s transversal Disaster Operations Centre to mitigate potential impact for the residents of Cape Town.
The city’s first priority is to manage traffic flow during the afternoon peak hours, through point-duty at major intersections affected by loadshedding. A number of intersections have been identified in this regard, and are being manned by traffic, metro police and law enforcement officers.
‘There are numerous potential impacts from these higher stages of loadshedding and while the city is deploying its resources as best it can to mitigate any risks to the public, we ask that residents do their bit by putting safety first, and to be aware of their surroundings at all times.
“Loadshedding does unfortunately come with an increased risk of opportunistic crimes like cable theft and smash and grab incidents, so please plan your routes carefully and be very alert when you have to stop at intersections,” says Smith.