LOAD SHEDDING: Municipality strives to be economically stable city

As parts of South Africa are left in the dark through load shedding, Newcastle has thus far remained unaffected.

During Local Government Week recently, August 25 to August 27, a Newcastle task team were invited to give a presentation on how the Newcastle Municipality dealt with load shedding.

Mayor Afzul Rehman, Acting Municipal Manager Bhekwani Mswane Lindile Zincume, Strategic Director for the Electrical Department, represented Newcastle’s Municipality at the conference.

During their presentation the task team revealed the municipality had two electricity licenses in place.

The Newcastle Local Municipality license covers 18 000 households, which includes the CBD, industrial area and suburbs, while an Eskom license, in turn, covers approximately 65 000 households, which included Madadeni, oSizweni and Blaauwbosch.

Newcastle Municipality has furthermore put plans in place to shed industrial customers, without having a major impact on the companies production.

They have also taken steps to minimise load shedding, through the geyser ripple control, which ensured stages 1 and 2 of load shedding were addressed.

In case of emergencies, Newcastle also has a fully functional Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system in place, which was upgraded in 2014 by Powertech IST.

The ABB hand operated breakers have also been replaced with automatic breakers to enable remote control using SCADA.

The municipality has also planned for the future.

The plans involve a voltage reduction facility, which is in place and can achieve a saving of four mega volt amps.

Other plans include smart meters for industrial and residential customers, as well as potential for load limiting.

Despite having applied interventions, the municipality will continue to work hand in hand with Eskom in the implementation of load shedding.

This will be done while thinking of innovative ways of integrating the shedding system, while upholding the needs of Newcastle residents and businesses within the Municipality.

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