Water supply challenges a result of power failures and high water consumption
Residents are urged to use water wisely.
Rand Water’s maximum water treatment capacity at its purification plants, Zuikerbosch and Vereeniging, is 5 000ML water per day.
From the water purification works, purified water is pumped to the pump stations Eikenhof, Mapleton, Palmiet and Zwartkopjes.
These further pump water to 59 water storage reservoirs in the distribution network, from which municipalities receive water to distribute to residents.
The total reservoir storage level on January 8 was 76%.
This level started to significantly decline from January 9 due to high water abstraction of municipalities from the reservoirs.
The situation was exacerbated by power supply failures that affected the Zuikerbosch purification plant and Eikenhof pump station on January 13.
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The power outage incident lasted for six hours and affected the Zuikerbosch pumping station at its engine room four, which supplies almost 40% of Rand Water’s capacity.
This affected pumping to pump stations that feed water into reservoirs.
A power outage at the Eikenhof booster station affected the system for three hours, making it impossible to feed water into the reservoirs.
Rand Water’s system is extremely sensitive to any power outage and may take a minimum of four hours to recover after an outage.
The reservoir storage level then dropped to 63% when the system recovered.
The drop in water storage level in the reservoir resulted in Rand Water requesting municipalities to reduce their consumption to retain as much water in the reservoirs and ensure the system does not drop an almost impossible recovery.
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This did not assist in that high-water abstraction continued dropping the reservoir storage levels further.
The water storage in the reservoirs then stabilised at around 30%. At this low level, other reservoirs were significantly impacted to be below 15%.
When some of the Rand Water reservoir levels are below 15%, the municipalities start experiencing inadequate to no supply to high-lying areas in their networks.
Rand Water continued engaging with its customers via meetings and formal letters to request them to monitor water consumption in their respective areas and effect the necessary measures to manage high water consumption during the heat wave.
On January 29 at 04:30, Rand Water Eikenhof booster station experienced yet another power failure that affected water pumping from this station.
This incident caused a further depletion of Rand Water’s reservoirs levels leaving some reservoirs at 0% storage level.
Rand Water is completing its generator installation project aimed at reducing power outages. However, generator capacity will not cover all Rand Water sites.
Power outages remain one of the biggest threats to the stability of Rand Water’s networks as it affects continuous water supply to municipalities.
Rand Water systems have started stabilising pumping at maximum capacity.
Full recovery, however, will be dependent on less frequent power failures. In the meantime, Rand Water urges all consumers to use water wisely to assist in the system’s full recovery.
