Power utility Eskom said on Wednesday that it would be embarking on a roadshow to educate the public on issues impacting on the national power grid, such as illegal connections, infrastructure theft, meter tampering and illegal vending. 

Education on load reduction would also form part of the drive. 

"Over the next few months, Eskom will be focusing on three primary areas in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal where electricity theft through illegal connections and network overloading are rife, but the education drive will also be rolled out nationally," said the company via a statement.   

It said the intention of the drive was to education communities on the dangers of illegal connections, overloading of networks and how these impacted on communities. 

The parastatal said it would also be communicating the differences between "loadshedding" and "load reduction", the latter having been introduced since mid-May following months of rotational blackouts, which have been termed loadshedding since they started over a decade ago. 

The group executive for Eskom’s distribution division, Monde Bala, said: “Loadshedding is when the national grid is constrained and there isn’t sufficient capacity to generate electricity.  Eskom then announces which stage of loadshedding it will be implementing across the country in order to ration electricity and protect the integrity of the national grid.  

"Load reduction is when Eskom switches off power to localised areas where illegal connections cause overload and as a result could damage infrastructure.”

Bala said the objective of load reduction was to protect Eskom’s infrastructure by reducing electricity usage during peak times, which is when the most damage occurred. 

Load reduction was also used to manage the impact on the transformers and mini-substations in that particular area. 

"Once a transformer or mini-substation is overloaded, it explodes and as a result that entire area will be out of power.  When a transformer explodes, it can’t be fixed, it has to be replaced and replacing a transformer can cost anywhere between R80 000 to R100 000."

The replacing of transformers was costing the cash-strapped utility billions of rands annually, he said, while illegal connections were a danger to the community and often resulted in serious injury, death, and damage to property.

"The excessive usage of electricity resulting from the illegal connections overloads the transformers, causing explosions that result in prolonged unplanned outages that can last for many days and leave all homes, traffic lights and businesses in the area without power. Unfortunately this also negatively affects even those customers who do pay for their electricity consumption," said the utility. 

Eskom’s solution to this was to implement load reduction for a few hours a day in affected areas, in order to protect the transformers and ensure continuous supply of electricity, it said. 

"We urge customers to not phone the contact centre during these hours, as supply will be restored once the demand stabilises."

 Another key component of the communication drive would be to address the "issue of non-payment", it said.

"In the Eskom customer base alone, some 1.7 million customers out of a total of 6.6 million are not paying for electricity consumed.  Add to this the municipal debt of R30.9 billion and it leaves Eskom in a precarious financial position.

"Eskom urges everyone to pay for the electricity they use, and to not engage in illegal connections - your behaviour could cost you your life or someone else’s. Act responsibly, pay and be legal."