Last week Drakenstein Municipality (DM) announced its reinforced three-pronged Eskom load-shedding resilience plan.
In a statement the DM reiterated the generation of energy is a national government competency and responsibility, and local government’s core focus and funded mandate is to render municipal services such as water, sanitation, waste management, electricity reticulation, and roads and infrastructure.
Therefore, DM has reinforced its Eskom load-shedding resilience plan, which rests on three pillars, namely sustainable service delivery, revenue protection and alternative energy.
“We will not be a municipality that misleads its community with quick and grand promises of alternative energy solutions that will supposedly replace Eskom and get its municipal area off the grid,” said Conrad Poole, Executive Mayor of Drakenstein.
“Reckless and irresponsible statements create expectations that no municipality can meet. It is not that easy, cheap, or quick to get off or semi-off the grid.”
According to Poole DM’s load-shedding resilience plan is based on a commitment to local government’s core business mandate as well as a pledge to keep on working responsibly with public funds.
The first pillar, sustainable service delivery, includes the following: “To safeguard municipal infrastructure and mitigate any possible service delivery disruptions caused by Eskom load shedding, DM has put into place comprehensive contingency measures.”
To address traffic control challenges during load shedding DM is following an innovative approach: it has already equipped more than half (54%) of its 48 primary signalised traffic intersections with Uninterrupted Power Supply (UPS) systems. In addition, DM’s point-duty service officer corps has been bumped up to assist with regulating traffic flow.
Poole says: “Over the past five years we have installed back-up generators at our water and wastewater facilities – such as our water and sewer pump stations, and wastewater treatment works – to ensure basic services keep running despite Eskom load shedding.”
Water reservoirs are designed to cater for at least 48 hours of storage capacity in the event of any breakdown in bulk supply, while all sewage pump stations’ pumps are designed to cater for at least four hours’ flow without electricity, before overflowing.
Electricity maintenance teams are constantly on standby to repair infrastructure that breaks down due to high stages of load shedding.
Finally, the municipality has been installing back-up generators at its main offices, service desks and facilities and other customer care centres, to ensure that it is open and ready to serve the public.
“DM further welcomes the R6 million relief aid we received from the Western Cape Government,” said Poole. “Drakenstein will match this with R6 million, which indicates how serious we are about ensuring continuous uninterrupted service delivery. Our procurement process to buy emergency diesel generators to the value of R12 million is already in place.”
The second pillar, namely revenue protection: municipalities, as with any other business entities, need to balance their finances. If they don’t, this will lead to bankruptcy and an incapacity to deliver services.
DM refuses to go down this road, and that is why it fiercely protects its revenue. Providing electricity supply is one form of revenue generation. The income generated from electricity supply goes back directly to essential maintenance of the electricity-network infrastructure.
Their third pillar, alternative energy is to assist in alleviating the sting of Eskom load shedding.
In conclusion, DM said that they are investigating ways of generating or purchasing alternative energy. It has an open door to and is engaging with various Independent Power Producers (IPPs) which are large-scale commercial investors specialising in generating alternative energy for sale.
