Between February and July 2022, the City of Cape Town protected its customers from 722 hours of Eskom load-shedding. The City remains committed to protecting its customers from up to two stages of load-shedding where it is possible primarily through the use of the Steenbras Hydro Pumped Storage Scheme. Unfortunately, Eskom’s load-shedding has resumed. The City will protect its customers tonight and will only shed between 17:00 and 19:00. No load-shedding is expected for City-customers for the rest of the evening.

'It is important that we ensure our Steenbras plant is properly maintained and that we invest in our energy infrastructure for reliable services. The City is also continuing to build on its programme of ending load-shedding over time by focusing on energy diversification to enhance security of supply with the City's own build projects, small-scale embedded generation programmes of buying excess power from qualifying customers, wheeling and independent power producer programmes.

'We thank residential and commercial customers who worked with us over the recent phase of load-shedding by curtailing load and also flattening the evening peak usage.

'Customers can continue to look at reducing usage especially during the winter months when electricity usage is higher. This also adds to household costs. Geysers use the bulk of household energy and reducing the temperature of the geyser to 60 degrees Celsius or making sure the geyser is on a timer or only active for an hour or two per day is a crucial step to reducing energy usage,' said the City's Mayoral Committee Member for Energy, Councillor Beverley van Reenen.

Source: City Of Cape Town