City Power looking at a plan to reduce load shedding hours

THE power-distribution utility in Johannesburg is in talks with Eskom to reduce outages in the city of more than 5 million people.

City Power officials proposed that the duration of the blackouts in Johannesburg be cut to two hours at a time to help businesses cope, spokesman Isaac Mangena said in an interview on Tuesday. The authorities are also discussing alternative sources of energy supply, including solar and gas, as well as initiatives including converting street lights to solar power, he said.

"What we are working on is a plan to cushion our customers from the frequency of load shedding," Mangena said, using the local term for power cuts.

"Currently you have customers being switched off for four hours at a time. That is killing a lot of people because you have no productivity for that period. So we have looked at the viability of reducing this to two hours."