THE EFFECT OF LOAD SHEDDING ON YOUR ELECTRICITY BILL – WHY IS THE JHB BUSINESS CHAMBER MUTE ON THIS MATTER?

Eskom charges its clients Notified Demand Charges (NMD) – these are fixed charges every month which are based on the assumption that continued supply is available.?Should you exceed this NMD they charge you a penalty tariff.

Municipalities vary in how they bill consumers for demand – some have NMD billing, others bill on kVA – and how this is calculated and billed is another bone of contention – especially in the City of Johannesburg.

kVA should be billed on actual measured demand on a monthly basis.?However, in the City of Johannesburg, you are billed on 80% of the 3 highest peaks of the previous years’ (12 months) measured demand.?In 2019 they illegally implemented the tariff to bill consumers on the single highest peak.?Although they admitted, in a NERSA hearing, that this was illegal, they only committed to rectify this from 1 July 2021 onwards.?What must be remembered, is that City Power pays Eskom every month for the demand it consumes.?

Because of load shedding, as a consumer your consumption pattern and profile is completely disrupted and now condensed into much smaller periods that power is available.?This means that your demand for power in that period is much higher than it would normally be.?Firstly, every time after load shedding an instantaneous peak is created, (this is often alleviated when proper power factor correction units are in place) but constant higher demand will be created in these shorter periods for both residential complexes and commercial institutions resulting in penalty tariffs from Eskom or a municipality with NMD tariffs (if they are the supplier) or higher kVA charges – in the case of CoJ it will be for the next 12 months because of their current billing practices.

So, not only are we as consumers billed on a monthly basis for services that we do not get but we are penalised when we do receive the services over diminished periods that we have no control over.??

Under these circumstances, a Time of Use tariff is more than likely no longer to your benefit.

Under load shedding conditions, most of your activities will be ‘crammed’ into those hours when power is available therefore increasing the number of kWh you consume in that specific tariff bracket – increasing the cost and nullifying the overall benefit that was calculated TOU would have given you on a constant supply.?The real impact can only be determined by measuring and will vary from entity to entity.?It is ‘interesting’ to note, however, that both Eskom and municipalities have been trying to force most consumers into TOU tariffs.?

My question is, why is the Johannesburg Chamber of Commerce so quiet on this issue??Why have they and are they not standing up for the business community in Gauteng, taken hands with Nelson Mandela Bay and the Pietermaritzburg & Midlands Chambers, in fighting these tariff issues with NERSA, Eskom and the municipalities on a broader scale nor fighting against the illegal 2019 electricity tariffs implemented by City Power and City of Johannesburg, that still have an impact.

We look forward to some answers from them.