City Power wins prestigious award
19 May 2016
City Power has scooped the much-coveted Power Utility of the Year at the Africa Utility Awards which were held in Cape Town, South Africa.
The Africa Utility Week is a leading annual power and water industry that attracts over 6000 attendees and 80 utilities from across the continent.
The Power Utility of the Year award recognizes the power utility in Africa that excels in any one or more of the following fields: service delivery, project roll-out, technology roll-out, revenue protection measures, loss reduction, grid integration and new energy sources, including company contribution to sector growth, demonstrated expenditure reduction, increased capacity to deliver services and revenue collection, completion of infrastructure development or sustainable maintenance projects.
City Power was vying for this much-sought award with a number of utilities from across the continent, namely Ghana Grid Company Limited, KenGen from Kenya, Kenya Power and Lighting Company Limited and Volta River Authority from Ghana.
Says Sicelo Xulu, City Power Managing Director: “We are pleased that once again the diligent work that has been done by the City Power team has been recognized and acknowledged. This award is an affirmation of the hard work that has been done by the City Power team, and this accolade galvanizes us to work harder to provide our customers with the superior service they deserve.”
City Power introduced a range of interventions aimed at curtailing power consumption and lessening the potential for load shedding in its area of supply in Johannesburg. These cutting-edge solutions include load limiting, a first solution of its kind to be implemented in South Africa that enables City Power to remotely disconnect households that uses electricity excessively when the grid is under pressure.
Through its expansive network of smart meters across Johannesburg, City Power can remotely monitor households usage and request them to reduce consumption when the grid is constrained. In the event of non-compliance, the power is remotely disconnected. The power will return at intervals, giving the household the opportunity to reduce consumption to the required levels. When the required threshold is not reached, the household is disconnected completely throughout the load shedding duration of four hours.
City Power has also developed a load limiting application, a free app that is compatible with Andriod and iOS operating systems, which, amongst others, alerts residents of load limiting schedules and allows them to disconnect power remotely.
Through the implementation of load limiting, City Power has had to implement only 41 of the 220 requests from Eskom to shed load, thanks to the excess capacity created through load limiting.
City Power was also recognized for introducing a solution called ripple control, which disconnects geysers during periods of constrained supply. This solution has gone a long way towards alleviating pressure on the national grid and freed up to 110 MW of electricity.
Buoyed by the success of these interventions, City Power also rolled out technology called time of use, which is a dynamic tariff pricing system which prices electricity at a premium during peak periods when the pressure on the grid is high and at discounted rates during off peak periods. Time of use seeks to encourage usage of electricity during off peak periods by incentivizing customers.
“The past three years have been both challenging and exciting – it was a golden era of accolades and recognition for sound leadership and innovation at City Power,” says Xulu.