Energy Management that can boast consistently spending about 95% about our capex on an annual basis. Just last financial year, the city’s Energy Department spent 96.26% of its capex and the department has consistently reached almost 100% in previous years. This is on the order of another R500 million being spent each year on new infrastructure to carry on expanding the network and catering for growth,” says Wilson. The city’s capex spending is based on a 20-year master plan, which incorporates geographical and system information. “The plan is updated annually and takes into account economic trends, human settlement development plans, developers’ plans, and general trends. The rest of the plan is based on community independent development plan needs,” adds Wilson.
Revenue collection Revenue is important because electricity sales are still the number one income generator for the majority of municipalities. “We have a large and highly successful Revenue Division. We often lend our people out to other metros and they also send people to us to learn more about our revenue collection best practices,” says Wilson The city has achieved upwards of 99% collection of its industrial and business customer revenues. “Even though we don’t do the collection ourselves, we make sure the billing is in place and the meters aren’t tampered with. Also, we continually run blitzes against illegal connections. “For prepayment meters, we have a 90-day exception list, where we check why prepaid users haven’t used electricity for that period. We audit every month – it’s a massive process that includes contractors, consultants, and our own staff just to ensure the value chain of revenue from the meter to the money in the bank remains intact,” explains Wilson.
Cable theft Equipment and cable theft is a massive problem across the countr y. “Not long ago, we were experiencing over R100 million worth of equipment and cable theft per year. That was just
the cost of replacing the equipment and materials, and it does not include the cost of power lost to the economy. So, we’ve initiated a cable theft task team, which includes our own Ekurhuleni Metro Police Depar tment, the South African Police Services, a private service provider, as well as our own staff,” says Wilson. Part of the programming includes fitting substations with security devices. These have led to a number of successful arrests and convictions, dropping power outages occurring as a result of theft by about 60%. Additionally, new legislation is set to come into effect that will extend jail terms to up to 30 years for syndicated infrastructure vandalism.
Load-shedding When load-shedding started happening on a regular basis, the city made the decision to prioritise business sustainability, in order to protect jobs. “We decided we would not load-shed business or commercial entities at all, and that set us apart from other municipalities. “We felt that, as a major driver of the economy, it would be more prudent to load-shed only domestic users. Daytime load-shedding on households has a lower impact than it does on businesses, as it is more of an inconvenience than the threat it becomes when applied regularly to, say, factories,” says Wilson. The city was largely successful in its plans, although it applied only to Stage 1 and Stage 2 load-shedding. Stage 3 was managed by Eskom. “However, we are in talks for the city to take over Stage 3 loadshedding from the national utility so we can continue our prioritisation of business sustainability,” says Wilson. The city also load-sheds on a three-hour basis, as opposed to the more common fourhour time period, in order to reduce impacts. Communication was also critical; a high importance was placed on maintaining the accuracy of the city’s load-shedding
schedules. “We managed to be about 99% accurate, and this gave residents confidence to plan around the times we published,” Wilson adds.
Embracing innovation The first smart electricity meters in the country were rolled out in Ekurhuleni about 20 years ago, in Tembisa. The city receives in excess of 99% payment rates from Tembisa residents to date. After this success, the city decided to roll out smart meter technology to businesses. “A smart meter is better suited to a large customer, due to the fact that loads are switchable and can be managed in real time. We installed 8 000 meters, which account for 60% of all the Energy Department’s income. That’s all online, so customers can login, review half-hourly consumption rates, and make plans in terms of shifting loads and adopting time-use tariffs. “That’s been up and running for a number of years. The software for those meters is now being developed further, in order to track outages, and the system will be fully operational in the next two years,” says Wilson.
Future outlook Wilson believes that one of the biggest challenges to electricity production in the future will be maintaining Eskom’s baseload capacity. “Ekurhuleni’s economy cannot grow without sufficient energy, and business needs a sense of stability of supply in order to thrive,” he says. As for future opportunities, smart grids are the way of the future. “A smart grid is critical to a smart city, and one of our big flagship projects is to turn the City of Ekurhuleni into a smart city; last year, we developed a plan to develop a smart grid roadmap. That plan tells us our status quo and defines an end state,” concludes Wilson. In the future, the city’s Energy Department will be able to track all power disruptions, including thefts, in real time. For large energy consumers, there is already a system being piloted that alerts a repair team before an incident is even called in.
“We decided we would not load-shed business or commercial entities at all, and that set us apart from other municipalities.” Mark Wilson, head: Energy Department, City of Ekurhuleni
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