Plan your day around load shedding

North Coast residents should learn to plan their day around load shedding, because it is here to stay for the forseeable future.

This was the message coming out of a press briefing in KwaDukuza on Tuesday, where speakers from Eskom and the municipality predicted that this period of uncertain electricity supply which could continue for at least another three years.

Electrical engineer Nick Hall said that each period of load shedding was for two hours.

“Stage one indicates that there will be load shedding every second day. Stage two means that there will be load shedding once a day. Stage three can mean two or more periods during the day,” said Hall.

He stressed that residents need to remember that Eskom does the generation and distribution of electricity and therefore the municipality has no control over the load shedding periods.

“Sheffield and Salt Rock are overloaded areas, meaning their power often trips once the load shedding period has ended, leaving them without electricity for a further two hours. A new substation is being built in the area and should be energised in about seven months time, which will take some of the load off,” he said.

Ilembe Water technician, Vim Pillay, pleaded with the municipality to give them half an hour warning before load shedding would kick in, so that they could manually turn off the pumps from the reservoir to elevated areas.

“When the power fails the pumps slam shut, causing turbulence in the pumping system, which can cause the main pump lines to burst,” he said.

This happened last Friday due to load shedding and it took more than 12 hours to fix the problem, leading to about 20 000 litres of fresh water being lost.

Eskom manager Prashunt Lutchman said the maintenance backlog has led to increased and often unexpected breakdowns.

“The future prognosis looks very bleak. However we will take whatever steps necessary to prevent going into a blackout,” he said.

Acknowledging that KwaDukuza was one of the fastest growing municipalities, Mayor Ricardo Mthembu made it clear that development would not slow down.

“We want to be an economic powerhouse, but we did not realise we had grown so fast,” he said.

He appealed to the community to help save electricity by conserving electricity and looking at renewable resources.

He said people created their own load shedding, by not being energy wise.

“The bottom line is we need to save energy and we need to be energy observant.”

“We need to be a team and face load shedding as a community. The level of communication of load shedding needs to improve and it needs to be communicated in different languages, so that all the citizens understand it,” said Mthembu.

Hall highlighted that the free-of-charge geyser relays, which should help prevent load shedding, need to be communicated better,

“We have 2700 relays that need to be installed, but no one wants them,” he said.