No load shedding right now, says eThekwini Municipality

The eThekwini council has defended its electricity department staff who refused to turn the lights on after eight days of a Durban man's pleading for them to do so. Picture: Reuters

The eThekwini council has defended its electricity department staff who refused to turn the lights on after eight days of a Durban man's pleading for them to do so. Picture: Reuters

Published Jul 10, 2022

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Durban - Several of Durban’s industrial operators that consume large quantities of electricity have remained closed owing to the power supply not having been restored after the devastating April floods wrecked infrastructure.

Therefore, eThekwini Municipality is adamant Eskom won’t impose load shedding on the city just yet.

While the council issued a joint statement with Eskom earlier this week notifying residents that an agreement had been reached to implement load shedding sooner, Maxwell Mthembu, eThekwini Municipality’s head of electricity, said many factors still needed to be considered.

Mthembu revealed that many big industries in the city had been the hardest hit by the recent floods, and had therefore not yet returned to fullscale operations.

He clarified that the city had never been exempted from load shedding, but was consuming less power from the national grid as a result of the flood damage.

He said over 200MW had already been lost after the floods, and that imposing more lockdowns could further compromise some stations and water pumps.

The council and Eskom conceded that an assessment had since indicated that the city had lost 50% (between 700MW and 800MW) of the load on its electrical infrastructure.

To date, a significant portion of this load had not been restored and would continue to be off the grid until extensive repairs were carried out. “We have several industries that have not reopened after the floods.

The Sapref refinery, Toyota and many others have not reopened, while Mondi only recently restarted their operations. “Furthermore, many of our water reservoir pumps are not working. This has also reduced our consumption off the national grid.

“We were never exempt from load shedding as a city, but it was an unfortunate event that we were already not using electricity because of the flood damage,” Mthembu said.

With Eskom not able to meet the country’s electricity demands over the past week, level-6 load shedding measures were implemented. For now, eThekwini residents have been able to keep their lights on because of the city’s overall lowered demand for electricity.

Eskom said the municipality had agreed to implement the process of load shedding to assist in mitigating the risk of a national grid collapse.

It also said the city had further assessed the long-term strategy to implement load shedding as soon as possible to the equivalent load as was the case before the disaster.

But Mthembu called for calm among eThekwini residents, saying that, while they had reached an agreement with Eskom on power cuts, load shedding would not be implemented haphazardly.

He said by August 15 the city would have developed a schedule for possible load shedding. This will be done carefully to ensure we do not collapse our compromised infrastructure.

“Our water reservoir pumps are currently fragile. We are aware that implementing load shedding may cause challenges. We would like to assist Eskom, but we will be mindful of the implementation of load shedding. Our water supply relies on the availability of power, and we are aware that some pumps remain faulty.

SUNDAY TRIBUNE