CITY Power scooped the much-coveted Power Utility of the Year award at the Africa Utility Awards held in Cape Town this week.
Africa Utility Week is a leading annual power and water event which attracts over 6 000 attendees and 80 utilities from across the continent.
The Power Utility of the Year award recognises the power utility in Africa which 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 competing with a number of utilities from across the continent, including the Ghana Grid Company, KenGen from Kenya, Kenya Power and Lighting Company and Volta River Authority from Ghana.
Sicelo Xulu, City Power`s managing director, said: “We are pleased that once again the diligent work that has been done by the City Power team has been recognised and acknowledged.
“This award is an affirmation of the hard work that has been done by the City Power team, and this accolade galvanises us to work harder to provide our customers with the superior service they deserve.”
City Power has introduced a range of interventions aimed at curtailing power consumption and lessening the potential for load shedding in its area of supply.
These include load limiting, a first solution of its kind to be implemented in South Africa that enables City Power to remotely disconnect households with excessive use when the grid is under pressure.
Through its expansive network of smart meters across Joburg, City Power can remotely monitor household usage and request households to reduce consumption when the grid is constrained.
In the event of non-compliance, the power is remotely disconnected.
City Power has also developed a load-limiting application, a free app that is compatible with Android and iOS operating systems, which, among 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 recognised 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 110MW of electricity.
The utility also rolled out technology called “time of use”, which is a tariff pricing system that 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 incentivising 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,” said Xul
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