DURBAN - ETHEKWINI Municipality is counting the cost of load shedding after it revealed that it is losing more than a R1 million each time there are rolling blackouts.
The losses come in two forms: through the loss of sales and through the damage to the network that occurs as a result of the power switching on and off.
While the loss through sales is estimated at R1m, the loss through damage was unclear.
In an interview with The Mercury, deputy city manager for Trading Service, Sibusiso Makhanya, and head of Electricity, Maxwell Mthembu, spoke about the toll that load shedding was having on the city’s coffers and infrastructure.
They were speaking following a complaint by the DA about the state of the city’s electricity infrastructure, the outages that left residents without power for extended periods and vandalism.
The two officials said each time there was load shedding, the city lost R1m. Mthembu said the R1m was the revenue that the city lost from sales when there was stage 2 load shedding.
“I cannot buy and I cannot sell electricity to customers and I lose. Another problem is that when there is an outage, there are those who just decide to vandalise our infrastructure or steal cables; that is also a cost,” he said.
He said that the city had not tallied the figures on how much it had lost in the past year due to the many rounds of load shedding.
Speaking on the power outages that extend beyond the load shedding period, Makhanya said there was a link between load shedding and the outages.
“If the power is turned on and off haphazardly, there is going to be some damage, it’s like at your house, if things are turned on and off, there will be damage,” he said.
Makhanya said that in some areas, even when the power came back after load shedding, it was overwhelmed by the appliances connected to the supply and trips, prolonging the power outage in that area.
“If, for instance, the power is restored after load shedding and in a particular area there were many geysers on, it will trip and that is why we encourage people to turn off their appliances during load shedding,” he said.
Makhanya also touched on the issue
of vandalism and emphasised that protecting infrastructure could not be the job of the municipality alone as there were huge costs attached to employing security and it was not possible to protect all of the infrastructure all the time.
He said mayor Mxolisi Kaunda was visiting parts of Durban to encourage the community to care for the infrastructure that serviced them.
“Electricity and water are facing a challenge with vandalism. I can tell you that the closure of some of our beaches was because a water pump was vandalised by community members who were stealing electricity,” he said, adding that in some cases workers were attacked when attending to faults.
DA councillor Ernest Smith said in a statement yesterday that his party was deeply concerned about the state of the city’s electricity infrastructure and the impact that it was having on the community.
He said electricity infrastructure in eThekwini was not being adequately protected, which has allowed for vandalism to occur, resulting in power outages that leave residents without power for extended periods of time.
He said there was a lack of adequate security at municipal substations, and called for the reintroduction of internal security measures across the municipality.
Smith alleged that the substation on Umgeni Road in Morningside was broken into and vandalised, causing subsequent damage to underground electricity cables which resulted in a prolonged outage.
“The lack of adequate security is costing the municipality and the ratepayers millions of rand in repairs and irrecoverable losses. This includes the effects on ordinary homes when food spoils and those dependent on electricity for health reasons cannot access it,” he said.
Councillor Patrick Pillay, of the Democratic Liberal Congress, said the party was aware of power outages in some parts of Phoenix that lasted longer than load shedding.
“The power would come back on after load shedding but in some areas, it would only come back three hours later.”
Pillay said that the city should invest in protecting infrastructure, adding that the ageing infrastructure and the slow response times when there were outages, was having a negative impact on business and driving investors away.
THE MERCURY