The City of Mbombela (CoM) held a 1.5-hour press conference today, January 4, to address recent service delivery challenges and to appraise the public on its plans to improve the quality of its service.
The media briefing was opened by municipal spokesperson, Joseph Ngala, who introduced the executive mayor, Cllr Sibongile Makushe-Mazibuko, and the rest of the council members present.
After a brief introduction, Makushe-Mazibuko outlined 14 areas of priority that will be addressed over the next five years through all four regions of the province.
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The most pressing priorities were to address the impact of load-shedding on the CoM’s water supply, the reasons behind the six-day West Acres blackout and to put to sleep rumours that the outages Mbombela had suffered throughout December were a result of the CoM not paying its Eskom bills.
Makushe-Mazibuko then handed over to Wiseman Khumalo, the municipal manager, who addressed the following areas in detail.
1. Load-shedding/load reduction.
Khumalo said the CoM, like all municipalities, has been drastically affected by the rolling blackouts being implemented by Eskom. “Load-shedding and load reduction affect the provision of electricity supply which in turn impedes the City’s ability to provide other services like the purification and reticulation of water and traffic management,” he said.
“The City has been engaging with Eskom in this regard for purposes of doing its own load-shedding to some of its substations. This would minimise the interruption on critical infrastructure like water treatment works.”
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Khumalo bemoaned the fact that the CoM is never warned about load-shedding and that varying schedules and load-shedding levels made it impossible to counteract the situation with adequate planning timeously.
“It must be noted that load reduction is a unilateral decision and is unannounced or pre-communicated as Eskom is trying to manage its load demand,” he said.
The load reduction started on December 7, 2022, when even substations like Delta, which was not part of the load-shedding schedule, were unilaterally switched off. Upon investigation, the CoM was informed of the load-reduction process.
Khumalo said, “We had hoped this was just a once-off exercise. Subsequent to our initial meeting with Eskom regarding load reduction being implemented over and above the load-shedding schedules, the City formally wrote to Eskom on December 23, 2022, seeking clarity on the continuation of this load reduction. Until this day, no response has been forthcoming.”
2. Impact of load-shedding on water provision.
According to Khumalo, due to the linear/relay nature of the water systems, planning for load-shedding and load reduction becomes impossible as the schedules issued by Eskom affect different pump stations and reservoirs at different times.
“As an example, the White River water scheme is badly hampered by staggered power outages. The scheme gets on average 10 million litres of water on a 24-hour basis from the Mbombela water scheme to Rocky Drift, Phumlani/Msholozi, White River and Hillsview.
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“There are three pump stations on this line, namely Boschrand, Bundu and Phumlani, which are all on different load-shedding time zones. White River town also receives water from White River Water Works that was never on a load-shedding schedule in the past,” he said.
“It is worth noting that the system can take about two days to recover after water outages, especially towards the high-lying areas of Hillsview, Coltshill and Waterkant.
“It is also prevalent that, after power restoration, the electrical network got badly affected and resulted in downtime and delays in pump restoration, especially at Phumlani and Hazyview Water Works. Subsequently, malfunctioning of pumps is high during load-shedding due to the abrupt stoppages and fluctuating power voltage.”
Khumalo explained that poor water quality in White River was due to low water levels and that teams have embarked on a reservoir clean-up programme.
“Due to water shortages, flushing of the system was not possible and some mud residue landed in it. The system is closely monitored in order to detect other possible sources of poor water quality.”
Khumalo said White River Water Works requires an urgent refurbishment and pipe network replacement as the infrastructure has aged.
Areas on the eastern axis of Mbombela are worse off, even when there is no load-shedding. Water to the areas from KaNyamazane to KaBokweni is being rationed as the demand exceeds the supply. The rationing schedule is badly affected during power outages, such that the system can take up to a week to recover.
Matsulu, also being on the Eskom supply area, is also badly affected when load-shedding is implemented.
Khumalo said Barberton is fairly managed by CoM. Later, Makushe-Mazibuko reiterated that it is getting the attention it deserves. “Refurbishment of the infrastructure is also on the cards for Barberton.”
Plans going forward
• Full implementation of the Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition software system for proper monitoring of plants.
• Standby generators (up to 1 000KVA) will be sourced for some of our pump stations to alleviate the current challenges.
• Sourcing of alternative energy: This innovation is now at the bid specification stage and the CoM will go out on tender shortly. Responsive bidders are expected soon in the quest to augment the current capacity and to move towards cleaner energy.
• The CoM is planning for a dedicated line to energise KaNyamazane Water Treatment Works and to isolate it from the township grid.
• The municipality will engage Eskom to do load curtailment with bigger customers and sign an agreement to that effect.
3.West Acres blackout
On December 26, 2022, the city experienced a blackout on one of its substations that affected a number of mini substations and transformers.
Khumalo expressed his appreciation to all members of the team and stakeholders who had worked tirelessly to ensure that power was restored within six days.
“This work was no mean feat. In some instances, ordinary but honourable citizens assisted the CoM team in digging up trenches and locating the multiple faults that had resulted from the equipment failure.
4. The 132/11kV West Acres Substation
This substation is designed and configured to minimise the extent of damage when various abnormal faults occur in any of its systems or work packages.
Khumalo said, “The origin of the fault is suspected to be the rush of current due to switching back from load-shedding. When a cable fault occurred, the current transformers of the panel feeding that specific load sensed the current and relayed the sensed current to the electromechanical protective device. The protective device issued a trip signal after the sensed current was deemed to be higher than the pick-up current of the settings and delayed time has elapsed.
“However, the tripping coil of the circuit breaker could not be energised due to insufficient DC power. The failure of the battery cells to deliver the required power to the tripping coil is an attributing factor to the failure that was experienced.
“The battery cell acid that was lower than normal caused the battery cells to function at lower efficiency. Furthermore, the grounding system was tripped by cable theft causing the faulty current not to be localised. The faulty current then distributed itself to the network, thereby damaging many cable joints as they are the weakest links in the network.”
He further explained that the temporary solution opted for was to restore power supply to end users in the shortest period by bypassing and loading other panels that were not badly damaged.
“It took six days to restore power to all rings. As such, the ability of the temporary solution to survive another abnormal condition was secondary and not addressed.”
The following secondary plant work packages are being implemented to replace the temporary solution:
• Substation switchgear board is to be installed
• A mini substation for local power
• A 110V, 30A battery charger with 100Ah nickel cadmium batteries contained in a separate stand
• A local substation automation
system panel.
5. Maintenance budget
Khumalo confirmed that the CoM has budgeted R44m for planned and emergency maintenance for the current financial year for electrical infrastructure.
“It should be noted that the unplanned blackout will be claimed against insurance,” he said.
6. Eskom account
Khumalo said the City’s Eskom account, as at the end of December 2022, is R1.1bn, inclusive of interest.
From December 1, 2021, to the end of December 2022, Eskom billed the City a total of R1.4bn and it has paid R1.284bn over the same period. There is an existing payment arrangement plan in place, which is currently being reviewed.
“The prevailing poverty, unemployment, and the devastating effects of Covid-19 impacted negatively on the collection rate of the City. During the 2022/23 financial year, the National Energy Regulator of South Africa approved a 9.61% tariff increase, as opposed to a 7.41% increase for Eskom and the CoM, respectively.
“This resulted in a 2.2% deficit to the municipality. The same trend has been experienced in the previous financial years. Distribution losses stand at 22% and are non-recoverable from customers.”
Proposed interventions to manage the Eskom account
• The City is upgrading major subs from 33KV to 132KV, which will result in technical losses of about 5%
• 100% meter audits to all customers (currently under way) to eliminate illegal connections and ghost vending
• Active partnering with Eskom
• Data cleansing to improve on the billing
• Monitoring all Eskom bulk intake billing points
• Daily account payments to Eskom (under way)
• Full implementation of the Credit Control and Debt Collection policy.
According to Khumalo, the CoM is optimistic that its account will be drastically reduced with the implementation of the above interventions.
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