THE City’s electrical infrastructure was severely damaged in the KwaZulu-Natal floods this year, and as a result, the municipality is currently operating in an emergency capacity for both electrical and water services. The eThekwini municipality has agreed on the soonest implementation of load-shedding to assist Eskom in mitigating the risk of a National Grid collapse.

This morning, Eskom and the eThekwini Municipality (represented by the eThekwini Electricity Department) released a joint statement with updates regarding the implementation of load-shedding within KwaZulu-Natal.

The statement began by highlighting the immense flood damage experienced across the province in April of this year. “While many municipalities across the province were impacted in varying degrees, the eThekwini Municipality, in particular, took the full force of the storm. Key infrastructure, including roads and bridges, as well as electricity and water infrastructure, have been catastrophically damaged. The scale of the disaster in the in eThekwini Municipality is unprecedented.”

According to their statement, Eskom and eThekwini Electricity have met on several occasions since the devastating floods to strategise about risk management in the province. “At these meetings, the municipality indicated that, in an effort to prevent and mitigate any further risk and potential damages to infrastructure, it was unable to discharge load-shedding according to the load-shedding schedules at the municipality.”

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Studies indicate that in the aftermath of the disaster, the municipality lost 50% (between 700mw to 800mw) of the electrical load on their electrical infrastructure. The eThekwini Municipality states that to date, a significant portion of this load has not been restored and will continue to be off the grid until extensive repairs are carried out.

According to the two government institutions, the integrity of the electrical infrastructure was so severely compromised, that if parts of the infrastructure and loads were to trip, either through manual intervention (load-shedding) or an electrical fault, it is possible and likely that the municipality grid could be even more severely damaged, thus further lengthening the duration of the outage.

As a result, the municipality is currently operating in an emergency capacity for both electrical and water services.

The eThekwini Municipality will be assisting the issue by enforcing load-shedding. “The municipality has agreed on the process for the soonest implementation of load-shedding to assist Eskom to mitigate the risk of a National Grid collapse.”

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The municipality has further assessed the long-term strategy to implement load-shedding as soon as possible.

Based on the assessment and discussions, Eskom has accepted the following:

• The municipality’s electrical network and water infrastructure are in an extremely vulnerable state. Additional risk needs to be managed very carefully.
• When the National Grid is at risk, the municipality is committed to implementing load-shedding in a safe and sustainable manner in consultation with Eskom.

The municipality has accepted the following:

• If for any reason, after load-shedding in the first few instances, a negative impact on the electrical and water infrastructure is deemed to be unacceptably high, the municipality will engage with Eskom immediately.
• The municipality will perform all the required planning to ensure that the above can be executed.
• The Energy Regulator of South Africa (NERSA) will be kept informed of the status of the eThekwini Municipality network as outlined above.

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