Cape Town’s next big step to tackle load shedding
The City of Cape Town says it is planning to increase its water and sanitisation budget seven-fold over the next three years in a bid to protect its pump stations from load shedding.
The city said that its budget under the mayoral priority programme for water and sanitation will ramp up from R70 million in 2022 to R400 million in 2024 and R500 million in 2025.
This will go towards upgrading pump stations, boosting protection from load-shedding and clamping down on illegal dumping into the sewer system. R500 million in 2025. Read more below:
By June 2023, the city aims to have installed permanent generators at 110 priority sewer pump stations requiring generation capacity, with around 30 more earmarked for installations.
All 26 wastewater treatment plants already have permanent generators, it said, adding that early warning telemetric alarm systems have been installed at all 487 sewer pump stations to help detect faults.
“As part of rapidly scaled-up budgets, over R100 million annually will go to generators and electrical maintenance to protect against load-shedding; screens to protect against foreign items in sewers; and security measures to combat ongoing theft and vandalism of critical infrastructure.
“Major upgrades and refurbishments to priority pump stations across the city accounts for the remainder of planned annual budgets, set to exceed R400 million by 2024,” it said.
Load shedding is wreaking havoc on critical infrastructure in major cities across the country, leading to water supply issues, outages and extended periods of service delivery failure.
Cape Town mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis said that the city is working towards protecting the city from at least four stages of load shedding over time, but needs to ramp up investment now to protect infrastructure from sustained blackouts.
“Cape Town’s sewer infrastructure is under pressure from rapid urbanisation and in need of upgrading. One of our first actions in office was to quadruple the City’s proactive sewer pipe replacement target from 25km to 100km annually.
“Now thanks to an ongoing city-wide audit of the state of sewer pump stations, we are ready to massively ramp up budgets for upgrades. This includes protection from load-shedding, sewer misuse, theft and vandalism,” he said.
Due to the flat terrain in most of the metro, 70% of Cape Town’s sewer reticulation network relies on sewer pump stations, the city said, adding that there is a high risk of these pump stations backing up and spilling if load-shedding is longer than two hours.
“While the City has made significant investments in back-up generator capacity, this cannot be a final solution given the costs and high-energy demand of our facilities,” it said.
Generators also do not prevent disruptions entirely due to manual switching between supply systems.
With sustained high stages of load-shedding, the switching can cause faults and often requires heavy manpower. Load-shedding may also impact early-warning alarm systems, preventing operational teams from receiving fault alerts timeously.
“Each pump station comes with its own set of specific engineering challenges that need to be evaluated and converted to a detailed solution design. For example, there is insufficient space for on-site generators in some cases, requiring alternative solutions,” the city said.
The operating cost of generators is also extremely high – estimated to be R150,000 monthly per pump station.
“This increases for energy-intensive wastewater works, with diesel costs to run the Zandvliet plant for just 48 hours exceeding R1 million.”
Cutting 4 stages of load shedding
Cape Town aims to provide at least four stages of load-shedding protection progressively over the next three years under the Mayoral Priority Programme to end load-shedding over time.
To achieve this, plans include:
- Buying power on the open market, with the second phase of its major IPP procurement due to be announced soon;
- Paying businesses and residents to sell power back to the city;
- Incentives for voluntary energy savings under a new Power Heroes programme;
- Municipal generation projects such as Steenbras Hydro power, solar PV, and gas turbines.
Read: Cape Town’s plan to move away from Eskom and load shedding – promising cheaper electricity
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