Nelson Mandela Bay already sheds less than other cities but load shedding can be reduced even further if households that don’t have geyser control devices keep their fingers on the geyser switch.
MMC for Electricity and Energy in the metro, Lance Grootboom, explained that for the past few years, geyser control in 84 000 households has been maintained by the municipality by means of the Ripple Control System.
This means that geysers have been switched off automatically via these devices twice a day. The devices were installed in domestic households where geysers use more than 3KW.
However, there is a remainder of 200 000 households that do not have these devices installed and an appeal is being made by the municipality for these households to join the others by switching off their geysers twice a day during peak times.
This will lessen the load in such a manner that the metro might not have the first three stages of load shedding at all.
Grootboom said that of the 84 000 that have the devices, approximately 30% have found a way to bypass the devices and they too are being urged to get back on track to help the metro reduce load shedding.
“For those who don’t know, Nelson Mandela Bay does not shed as much as other cities and other provinces. We are actually supposed to shed more.
“In the stages where power is supposed to be cut three times, for instance, our metro only gets load shedding twice and where it should be twice, it is once, and so forth. This is because of our geyser control.
“As a city, we have an average consumption of 530MW per day. During every stage, Eskom expects us to shed a certain percentage. In stage 1, this is 5%, which is 26.7MW; in stage 2 they require 10% and so forth. The Ripple Control System has the capacity to save us a load of up to 44MW per switching-off cycle.
“If applied twice daily by residents who don’t have the Ripple Control System, between 08:00 and 10:00 and again between 18:00 and 20:00, we could save another load of 44MW. The applicable times for switching off in winter would be between 07:00 and 09:00 and again between 17:00 and 18:00,” Grootboom said.
“When one compares these savings to the required load per stage, we can, in theory, stop load shedding for stages one to three. If we subtract 88MW from each of the stages from stage 4 and upward, we can, also in theory, have stage 1 when Eskom announces stage 4, for example.
“The metro has a total consumer base of over 319 000 households. If we all implement geyser control by switching off our own geysers during peak hours or between the hours already mentioned, we can severely reduce the impact of load shedding in our metro,” he said.
When asked why the remaining households are not fitted with these devices, Grootboom said that it would take too long, approximately two to three years.
“That is why we are making an appeal to residents. It is also good to remember that this is only a short-term plan. There are also other mitigation plans that we are implementing to reduce load shedding.”
The mitigation strategies include load curtailment, using renewable energy sources and refurbishing the metro’s gas turbine generation plant, with work scheduled to start in July 2023.
