‘Overall, the Power Heroes programme will target 60MW in demand reduction, enough to protect against a full stage of load-shedding. 

‘Customers who choose to participate can opt to have a smart device installed in their home or business free of charge by the City’s appointed service provider. This will enable the remote switching of non-essential loads like geysers, pool pumps, or non-essential appliances in residential and commercial buildings.

To reach the 60MW target, we need to sign up tens of thousands of commercial and residential customers. 

‘The cumulative effect of thousands of installed devices will mean that, when Eskom requires load reduction, Power Heroes will be called on to support the effort and have their non-essential appliances remotely turned off as agreed. 

‘This entire voluntary programme will be rolled out in phases, and is one of the most cost-effective ways to mitigate load-shedding. 

‘With Team Cape Town at the helm, I am absolutely confident that we will achieve the target of a full stage of load-shedding protection. 

‘I call on Capetonians to support this initiative, to sign up and ‘Be a Hero’. Let’s show South Africa and the world, once again, that there is great power in teamwork, and that Team Cape Town can rise to the challenge, just as we did during the drought crisis.

‘Overall, our short-term load-shedding mitigation plans up to 2026 aiming to protect customers by up to four stages of Eskom’s load-shedding. This will be achieved largely through a mix of the use of the Steenbras Hydro Plant (1 – 2 stages); 500MW of dispatchable energy (up to four stages from 06:00 – 22:00 daily where possible); and demand management programmes, such as Power Heroes and load curtailment,’ said Mayor Hill-Lewis. 

The Power Heroes programme will be focused on residential and small commercial customers within City of Cape Town’s electricity supply area, not Eskom-customers. All low voltage (LV) customers with a maximum demand of less than 1MVA will be encouraged to participate in this important programme. The aggregator needs to reach around 25 000 – 50 000 customers in order for us to meet our target of 60MW in demand reduction. 

For the installation of smart meter devices, customers will be selected based on their ability to contribute non-essential load to our Power Heroes Initiative. This will be rolled out to all qualifying customers that are currently supplied by the City of Cape Town. The sequence of the rollout areas will be communicated once finalised. 

The City is in the process of concluding the contract with the service provider as all City approvals have been obtained to conclude this contract. The programme will be rolled out in phases to give the Ontec Karebo JV time to sign up customers who volunteer to participate in the programmme and for the JV to procure the smart devices.