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“The partnership between the Nelson Mandela Municipality’s Electricity Directorate and the Nelson Mandela Bay Business Chamber continues to deliver innovative solutions to help mitigate the risks of loadshedding on large manufacturers.”
Chamber CEO Denise van Huyssteen said that if it were not for the implementation of the 24-hour stage 5+ loadshedding schedule for qualifying industry, due to the extreme and sustained loadshedding over the past few months, a number of manufacturers may have closed their doors by now. “We regard this intervention as critical in saving investment and jobs in Nelson Mandela Bay,” said Van Huyssteen.
Currently 39 major manufacturing companies participate in the 24-hour schedule, which enables a less disruptive approach to loadshedding.
“The companies volunteer to load-shed for 24 hours in a row, and then operate for a couple of days depending on the level of loadshedding.”
The manufacturers who are currently on the 24-hour schedule have to meet certain eligibility criteria, such as having a clean feed in place from the sub-station to their manufacturing operations, using a minimum of 0.7MW of electricity, and must be registered on the ECWIN system used by the municipality to ensure compliance to the schedule is monitored.
“We commend the Electricity Directorate on their openness to partner with business in working together to save investment and jobs in Nelson Mandela Bay,” she emphasised. “We value this relationship, and look forward to continuing to work with them to find ways to support more businesses to find more tenable solutions to deal with loadshedding. Equally important, it is vital the collaboration is directed at finding ways to urgently rein in electricity inefficiencies and losses, to ensure the medium to long-term sustainability of the municipality.”
Van Huyssteen said that the chamber was committed to continuing to work with the Electricity Directorate to find solutions to a range of other issues, such as improving efficiencies, preventing electricity losses and outages, and supporting additional power generation opportunities.
“An important intervention in place is Adopt a Sub-Station, which enables chamber members to extend their private security to surrounding sub-stations, so as prevent cable theft and the vandalism of sub-stations. To date, 20 sub-stations have been adopted by our members, and so far this has proven to be effective.”
The chamber’s Renewable Energy Cluster, has attracted the interest of more than 20 companies, which combined account for 20 percent of the metro’s electricity consumption. Together they represent a consolidated customer base for a renewable energy producer which will install well over 200 MW of power generation,” she emphasised.
“There is scope for additional businesses to join at a later stage. Given that new energy generation capacity is being created, this project will have a positive influence on mitigating loadshedding in the medium term. We value the Electricity Directorate’s support of this initiative, and for having embraced the concept of Wheeling to allow end-users to procure IPP power through approved traders. There is opportunity for the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan Municipality to become a municipality of choice for IPPs and traders.”
