Today Premier Alan Winde hosted the first in what will be a series of Energy Digicons. The aim behind the digicons is to keep the public informed of what the Western Cape Government (WGC) is doing in the short, medium, and long term to address chronic rolling blackouts.

The Premier explained, “It is important for us as a government to keep citizens, both in the Western Cape and beyond, informed on what we are doing to safeguard services and livelihoods from the damage caused by mass power cuts.”

In his State of the Province Address last month, Premier Winde pledged to hold regular public engagements to demonstrate the WCG’s commitment to being transparent about its efforts to end blackouts. “Transparency and regular communication in a crisis of this magnitude is essential to help people make decisions for themselves and their loved ones, but also to keep us as government accountable,” said Premier Winde.

Power generation is not a provincial government mandate. “This, however, does not mean we must simply do nothing and wait for national government, which has displayed no urgency to act. The Premier continued, “By holding digicons, similar to what we did during the Covid-19 pandemic, we can to a degree allay peoples’ anxiety, offering them critical information which helps them plan better during this crisis”.

“Going forward, the digicons are an opportunity for the media and general public to constructively engage with me and my team on issues related to the energy crisis and efforts by the Provincial Government to ameliorate the impact of the blackouts and how the WCG is embracing and enabling the likes of renewable energy role players to form part of our energy resilience push,” Premier Winde added. The Premier has urged the public to join the broadcast across its various platforms every week.

Each digicon will feature a guest and a “Useful Fact of the Week”:

What is the difference between loadshedding, unplanned outages, and load curtailment?

Load Reduction is a measure taken by the National System Operator and distribution control rooms in order to prevent national, regional, or local blackouts. Load reduction can take the form of :

• Loadshedding – a time-based interruption of supply to customers on a rotational basis, scheduled and communicated with the public.
• Load curtailment – forced reduction for customers in response to an instruction given by the system operator or local distribution control, usually negotiated between Eskom and their direct customers.
• Unplanned outage or fault is supply interruption as a result of an unplanned activity caused by damage or vandalised equipment, equipment failure or storms etc.

Critically, as a citizen we experience it all as a loss of energy!

Watch a recording of the digicon here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4duyXoJJyU