ELECTRICITY
POWER TO THE PEOPLE The City of Ekurhuleni is hard at work to deliver on its mandate of providing electricity to all its residents and businesses.
T
he mandate of a municipality is to ensure that all members of the local community have access to at least the minimum level of basic municipal services (Section 73(1)(c) Municipal Systems Act 32 of 2000). One of the mandates of the City is to improve the access to electricity by the community of Ekurhuleni in accordance with a licence granted by the National Energy Regulator of SA (Nersa). The City of Ekurhuleni purchases most of its electricity from Eskom and resells to residents and businesses in its area of supply. As is widely known, Eskom has experienced problems with meeting the demand for electricity and introduced load-shedding. Loadshedding is a controlled process that responds to unplanned events in order to protect the electricity power system from a total blackout. Like the rest
of South Africa, load-shedding has impacted the economy and the City.
ENERGY PLAN In mitigation, the City has developed its Energy Plan, whose primary objective is to provide a wellconsidered and structured approach to the delivery of energy services in accordance with the service delivery mandate assigned to the City. The Energy Plan documents the intent proactively adopted by the City to be future energy ready. The implementation of the futureready aspirations, objectives and goals is to be performed within the context of the City’s Integrated Development Plan. In a rapidly changing and dynamic energy sector, careful consideration will be given to ensure that the changing energy demand is met by
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