Mogale City recently announced that the municipality is undertaking specific actions to move towards using alternative and renewable energy.
Initiatives include retrofitting buildings, streetlights and substations with more energy efficient systems.
The municipality released a statement that it actively supports the move towards alternative and renewable energy.
“The municipality keenly plays a part in the National Climate Change Strategy, including promoting local energy saving campaigns to which the executive mayor committed in his State of the City address in May 2013,” the statement reads.
The municipality declared it their goal to reduce significantly the impact of conventional energy generation on the environment.
A number of programmes on alternative and renewable energy that can be implemented have been identified in line with the City’s vision to lower carbon emissions, reduce the consumption of coal-generated electricity and to implement methods and processes to use energy more efficiently.
Among the initiatives that have been implemented to reduce load during peak hours is ripple remote control on water heating devices to comply with Section 2(b) of the Government Notice R773. This system reduces approximately 20 per cent of the load during capacity constraint periods and shifts the load to a lower costing period.
Energy consumption will be reduced through energy efficient light fittings in buildings as guided by Section 2(a). According to the municipality old light fittings in four municipal buildings are being replaced with more efficient fittings. These building are the President Hyper building, Traffic section offices building, main clinic and social services building and the licensing offices.
Reports indicate that as part of its normal streetlight maintenance programme, mercury lamp fittings will be replaced with higher energy efficient sodium vapour lamp fittings.
The municipality admits that implementing smart technology is not a once-off occurrence, but a process of migration to new technology that must be built into the distribution network.
“We therefore are in the process of installing optical fibre cables between the main substation and the Civic Centre to obtain communication and remote reading abilities.
“This will provide constant information about the load and quality of the supply on the network,” their statement reads.
The municipality also introduced smart prepaid meters whereby the communication between the active metering part and the customer interface unit is done on power line communication.
It is explained that the system separates the active metering part from the customer to reduce tampering and by-passing. When customers are metered accurately and forced to pay by means of credit control management, they reportedly reduce the load in peak hours.
Bad power factor is the most inefficient use of electricity because of the wasted reactive energy as consumption.
Power factor correction installations, according to the municipality, in this regard have been made in all backbone network substations.
The municipality reportedly is installing power factor correction systems at the Percy Steward Water Care Works and the Flip Human Care Works.
These systems allegedly not only improve energy efficiency, but also reduce load during capacity constraint periods, allowing the municipality to saves substantially on its Eskom account.
