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Est 2009 Issue 15 - 2015
16 - 23 April 2015
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Inner-City Gazette
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New system to keep lights on
Joburg Mayor Parks Tau announces the new system flanked by City Power Chairperson Frank Chikane and MD Sicelo Xulu.
‘As long as communities are participants in this programme, we can begin to keep the lights on for many hours’ Staff Reporter news@inner-city-gazette.co.za
T
he City of Joburg is to introduce a new system to mitigate the impact of load shedding and help keep the lights on, Mayor Parks Tau announced on Tuesday. The Mayor said the project, which is known as ‘load limiting’, will be rolled out to thousands of Johannesburg households that have been equipped with smart meters from the beginning of next month.
The announcement was made at a media briefing at Aspen Hills Nature Estate, south of Joburg, where the system was tested. “City Power has already installed smart meters in over 65 000 households in the past 18 months. A further 150 000 households are expected to be equipped with the smart meters by the end of October this year,” he said. Mayor Tau explained that residents in households where smart meters had been installed would receive an
SMS on their smartphones, advising them to reduce power consumption at a particular time. “It will be up to you to switch off those electrical appliances that you don’t need. If you ignore the signal, your power will trip for 30 seconds and will switch on again. If you continue ignoring the warning signal, the power will switch off completely,” he said. The power will remain switched off until the load shedding period in the particular area has lapsed. It is estimated that the City could save
us much as 775MW if all the 335 000 households with smart meters were to apply the system. Mayor Tau appealed to the city’s residents to make the project successful by voluntarily reducing power consumption. “As long as communities are participants in this programme, we can begin to keep the lights on for many hours. It is a simple system but it depends on the cooperation of residents,” he said. For now, the system will be applied in residential properties with
smart meters. The City has already initiated talks with business leaders with a view to extending the system to the business environment. Mayor Tau said the City was also looking at other initiatives to mitigate load shedding and generate power, which included using the ripple control relay system, efficient use of geysers and having generators on standby. “The City has used the ripple control relay system successfully to reduce the pressure on the power grid,” the Mayor added.