Johannesburg is putting in place energy management measures that will enable it to reduce its consumption by up to 25MW a year to ensure that residents and businesses are not affected by Eskom’s capacity problems during the winter months. This is equivalent to the power used by 11364 geysers a year.

Delivering his state of the city address yesterday, Johannesburg mayor Amos Masondo said the city aimed at “limiting the damage that may result from whatever Eskom may or may not do”.

“I want to reassure the people of Johannesburg that we are keenly aware of the problems and that we are working flat out to alleviate the situation and to keep power outages and related disruptions to a bare minimum.”

The city had just completed a feasibility study on energy management and some of the recommendations would be implemented in the coming months to ensure a long-term sustainability of the city’s energy sector.

“This will include the introduction of certain demand-side measures such as the use of solar energy and installation of energy efficient equipment in water and waste-work networks.”

The city has also set itself a target to provide alternative sources of energy such as solar power and gas to at least 20% of consumers in the medium term.

Masondo said the need to speed up the provision of housing was highlighted by President Thabo Mbeki in his state of the nation speech last month.

He also said the provision of decent housing remained a key focus of the city. During the next five years, at least 31 settlements would be relocated to major housing projects such as the Cosmo City and Doornkop.

The city also planned to deliver 30000 houses through the community builder programme, 50000 mixed-income houses in partnership with other players in the housing sector and 15000 rental houses.

He said the city would also “beef up” its plans to refurbish the council’s own-stock flats and old-age homes. “We will at the same time improve on management of these units and other related revenue collection.”

Masondo admitted that revenue collection remained a challenge for the metro and affected the city’s ability to deliver services. “In the past few years we have tended to focus our attention on cleaning data, collecting from those in arrears and ensuring that billing is accurate.

“We are now taking this matter to a different level by seeking to increase our revenue by a reasonable percentage and ensuring amongst others that those outside our database are properly captured and made to meet there obligations.”

By 2008 the city is expected to implement a single IT system to maximise revenue collection.