Amid electricity supply challenges due to insufficient generation capacity, ESCOM has issued a new program to ensure equitable distribution of electricity.
According to a press statement from ESCOM, in the new Electricity Management Programme (EMP), a day, which comprises 24 hours, has been divided into three equal segments of 8 hours each and therefore its domestic customers have been divided into three equal groups.
According to the new model, a day will be starting from 4am the first day and ending at 4am the next day.
It is said that on the first day of the week, the first group will be on electricity supply from 4am to 12noon and the second group will have electricity from 12noon to 8pm while the last group will have power supply from midnight to 4am.
“Conversely, the first group customers will have no supply from 12noon to 4am on the first day; the second group customers will have no supply from 4am to 12noon and from 8pm to 4am while the third group of customers will have no supply from 4am to 8.00pm on the first day.
For the sake of fairness, those customers that were the first to have supply on the first day should not always be the first to have supply during the subsequent days of the rest of the week,” reads part of the statement.
To allow for smooth switching operations, ESCOM has further built-in an allowance period of 1 hour in between the phases so that its engineers responsible for switching operations will have ample time to switch on and off customers as per programme.
ESCOM has urged its customers to be guided by the published EMP for their planning purposes
The electricity has assured its customers that good progress is being made in the short, medium and long term mitigating interventions to solve the current energy crisis.
ESCOM has further reminded its customers to observe energy saving tips in order to minimize the impact of the power outages due to insufficient generation capacity.
