This town in South Africa is cutting its load shedding – and Eskom is not happy

Frankfort in the Free State has been experiencing less frequent load shedding thanks to an independent power producer in the area, Rural Maintenance.

The company has been managing power distribution in the town for over a decade and was contracted by the Mafude Local Municipality.

Through purchasing electricity from four local solar farms at a more affordable rate than Eskom, Rural Maintenace distributes power across the Mafube Municipality.

Eskom has now threatened to block the company from reducing load-shedding schedules, MyBroadBand reported.

Rural Maintenace, as well as the Mafube municipality’s business forum, is set to meet with Eskom and its representatives in the Johannesburg High Court today.

The private utility has launched an urgent application to stop Eskom from taking complete determination over the frequency of rolling blackouts in Frankfort.

The primary dispute revolves around whether the private company can implement its own load-shedding schedules; however, ultimately, it will determine if the newly established solar farms will be used to their full capacity.

Speaking to 702, the CEO of Rural Maintenance, Chris Bosch, said that the case might set a precedent for the future of Independent Power Producers (IPP) in South Africa.

Eskom is worried that this may open the floodgates for a whole array of towns wanting to bring private generation online, taking away revenue from the national power utility and causing an influx of private generation applications.

Bosch said that Frankfort had been the ideal breeding ground for pilot projects to see how a community can reduce load shedding efficiently. Following consultation with Eskom, Rural Maintenace launched five separate initiatives to bring about new power with positive results.

Load shedding schedules were ultimately customised in the area, with larger power users that wished to have only one outage being granted that, and smaller power consumers having reduced frequency.

For example, said Bosch, if the nation was on stage 6 load shedding, larger users in the area would face a single nine-hour outage instead of two smaller instances, assisting smaller users.

However, he said that Eskom no longer has a specific gripe with the custom load shedding schedules, rather its sticking point is with new solar power being brought online.

Through the power bought by Rural Maintenance and ultimately distributed to the town, the region generates more electricity than it consumes, leading to no load shedding some days.

This stands in contrast to the rest of the nation, which has seen elevated levels of load shedding on all but one day of the year so far.

“We typically would put three megawatts on the grid, and we have to switch off one. Why, if we’re generating three and we have to switch off one, would we switch off the one? That benefit should go through to the community members,” Bosch said.

People in the area know that if from eight in the morning to four in the afternoon, the weather is good – they will not have load shedding, the CEO added.

“It would be critical to get a judgment in our favour (on 5 April), but that’s not the purpose of the exercise…We see it in our community; people are really tired of Eskom not being able to supply electricity but then creating all sorts of obstacles when other people make their own plans.”

Rural Maintenance started performing electricity maintenance services for Eskom’s rapid electricity programme as far back as 1993. According to the company, through its involvement in Mafube Local Municipality, the region is able to operate more cost-efficiently.

In August 2019, Rural Maintenance branched into solar development to further reduce energy costs.

The company provides various services for municipalities, including installing and deploying metering systems, managing bulk electricity offtake points, and monitoring consumption, among others.

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