Mayor Kabelo Gwamanda recently unveiled a comprehensive water security strategy, but a crucial aspect is missing – saving electricity, says Andrew Dickson, Engineering Executive of CBI-Electric: Low Voltage.

Electricity disruptions are hampering the city’s water supply. They prevent water from being pumped from reservoirs and damage already decaying infrastructure. In some cases, this leads to power surges on restoration, further jeopardising the system’s stability. It also impacts water treatment, storage, and management, as reported by the Department of Water and Sanitation’s (DWS) Green, Blue, and No Drop Reports.

These reports revealed that 46% of the country’s drinking water systems did not meet microbiological standards and that 67.6% of wastewater treatments failed to process sewage and other wastes adequately.

To mitigate load shedding, reducing electricity consumption is crucial. The public and private sectors could take steps to achieve this:

• Conduct regular energy audits to identify areas for saving electricity.
• Invest in energy-efficient technologies like LED lighting, heat pumps, and variable speed drives for appliances. Heat pumps, for example, are three times more energy-efficient than conventional geysers. Variable speed drives slow down motor speeds on a wide range of equipment from fans and lifts to ventilation systems and freezer rooms.
• Embrace renewable energy that reduces strain on the grid and uses a fraction of the water used by coal plants to produce electricity.
• Participate in load management initiatives by Eskom, which encourage industries to reduce peak hour electricity usage by clipping or shifting peak loads. Industries are required to manage this without contravening health and safety requirements to achieve demand reduction.