Author: Ntobeko Mangqwengqwe

The George Municipality’s move to explore alternative energy-generating sources is gaining impetus, as the Executive Mayor of George Alderman Leon van Wyk accompanied by the Municipality’s Electrotechnical Services team participated in a Wheeling and Trading Symposium that was held on Wednesday, 8 February 2023 at the Hawthorn Boutique Hotel in George, in partnership with a private electricity trading company, Enpower Trading.

Energy Wheeling is generally defined as the delivery of electricity generated by a private operator in one location to a buyer or off-taker in another location via a third-party network (Utility or Municipality). Therefore, the George Municipality intends to do wheeling services to explore available energy sources, steering them towards the Municipal grid, while also looking at a cheaper cost of electricity than Eskom’s current cost. With all the privately generated energy coming into the grid, the Municipality hopes to lessen reliance on Eskom as well as become energy secure.

The speakers and panellists during the discussions were Phillip van Niekerk from the hosts, Enpower Trading, Jeandre van Zyl from Solar Energy Africa, Gerjo Hoffman from Open Access Energy, Josh Dippenaar from Sustainable Energy Africa, Nhlanhla Ngidi from SALGA, Bernhard Teuteberg from DEDAT Western Cape and Jemaine Cupido from Bitou Municipality facilitated the proceedings of the symposium.

The Symposium attracted representatives from the energy sector and companies from George and other parts of the Country, Municipalities from the Garden Route District such as Mossel Bay, Bitou, Oudtshoorn, Hessequa and Knysna as well as Municipalities outside the district such as Swellendam Municipality, Nelson Mandela Bay Metro from the City of Gqeberha in the Eastern Cape, and the Executive Mayor Mzimkhulu Thebolla of Msunduzi Municipality from the City of Pietermaritzburg in KwaZulu-Natal.

Welcoming the attendees, the Executive Mayor of George Alderman Leon van Wyk said in his opening remarks that the unreliability of Eskom’s electricity supply and the increasing intensity of load shedding is causing huge disruption and damage across many production sections and the economy. “From a municipal perspective, our KWH sales have naturally declined even with households having to do their chores at times when electricity is available.”

“While we are encountering power supply disruption, we need to look to innovation to take us forward into new opportunities. Today we will be discussing Wheeling. This new topic is the disruptive radical change that will take us forward into a new era of trading in electricity, creating generating facilities and transporting electricity to where it is needed,” van Wyk added.

“I am very proud of our team here in George which has moved the boundaries in their quest to find solutions. Last year as a team we set new challenges in saying we needed to mitigate the risks that our municipal infrastructure faced, i.e., water treatment works, wastewater treatment works, and pump stations during load shedding. As 2022 progressed we also concluded that the Solar PV route needed to be supplemented by the rapid introduction of Battery Energy Storage.”

The first wheeling transaction took place in May 2022 at George Municipality, following the signing of the use-of-system agreements in July 2021. The billing process has for many years been done manually, requiring extensive time for verification and preparation of bills once the data was retrieved from the meters.

“The need for this freely licensed software pilot became evident when we considered wheeling and renewable energy scaling on the George Municipality’s electricity grid. The manual billing process was one of the main challenges and resolving this meant reducing reliance and pressure on key human resources, reducing potential errors that could occur in the billing process,” said Mr Bongani Mandla, the director of electrotechnical services at George Municipality.

Mr Bongani Mandla highlighted that the current George Municipality wheeling pilot consists of trade between one generator and four off-takers through Enpower Trading (a NERSA licensed Energy Trader) and this entire process has now been automated using Open Access Energy’s software.

“The Municipality is working on further improvements to its wheeling projects and to incentivise the private sector (both generators and off-takers) to participate in this program. These include creating a platform for customers to view their accounts and access their consumption and billing data in real-time on a portal, working with DEDAT Western Cape Government to speed up standardising the use-of-system contracts as well as moving from the 30-minute reconciliation to a Time-of-Use reconciliation by latest end of March 2023,” Mandla concluded.

Gerjo Hoffman (Chief-Executive-Officer and co-founder at Open Access Energy), Phillip van Niekerk (EnPower Trading), Cllr. Mzimkhulu Thebolla (Executive Mayor of Msunduzi Municipality from the City of Pietermaritzburg in KwaZulu-Natal), Ald Leon van Wyk (Executive Mayor of George), Bongani Mandla (Director for Electrotechnical Services – George Municipality) Jeandre van Zyl (Solar Energy Africa), Josh Dippenaar (Sustainable Energy Africa) and Jemaine Cupido (Bitou Municipality)

Jemaine Cupido (Facilitator from Bitou Municipality), Gerjo Hoffman (Chief-Executive-Officer and co-founder at Open Access Energy), Josh Dippenaar (Sustainable Energy Africa), Phillip van Niekerk (EnPower Trading), and Jeandre van Zyl (Solar Energy Africa)

The Planet Youth delegates visited the Executive Mayor of George, Ald Leon van Wyk on Wednesday, 1 February 2023. The Department of Health and Wellness is launching a whole of society programme focused on mental health called “Planet Youth”. The Planet Youth Concept is an Icelandic Prevention Concept, that has proved a success in reducing substance abuse and is designed to strengthen protective factors building healthy communities, especially for young people.

This concept has already kicked off with trial surveys at Jonga High, Thembalethu High and Pacaltsdorp High School this year. The official roll-out of the programme to the schools in George and Uniondale will occur after the launinrom February 2023. A Convenors Group has been established, with the Department of Health, George Municipality, Departments of Education, Sports, Arts and Cultural Affairs, Social Development, University of Cape Town, SAPS and several Non-Governmental Organisations.

Background to Planet Youth Programme:

Planet Youth George is a WOSA (Whole of Society Approach) platform for community collaboration that aims to improve mental health by reducing youth substance use, violence, and school dropout rates using an evidence-based and internationally tested approach of youth development activities, community empowerment and rigorous auditing.

Planet Youth inc. is an international organization, working in many countries worldwide, developed, and underdeveloped, to alleviate alcohol harms in adolescence with benefits across the life course.

Planet Youth and UCT commenced the George Planet Youth Programme in October 2022.

Aims of the Planet Youth community program

By engaging with Planet Youth:

1. The community of George aims to enroll all children across the subdistrict in mass participation to proactively develop health and wellness.
2. The local community aims to achieve a significant reduction in youth alcohol harms which will be measured as decreased school dropout rates, improved school academic performance, and a reduction in violence. This is projected to alleviate the burden on the overwhelmed mental healthcare system, correctional services, judiciary, education and social development.
3. The local community aims to improve employment rates by producing employment-ready youth.
4. Applying the Planet Youth view of positioning the school as the hub, reducing the economic and social harms of youth substance use and by increasing employment rates, the local community aims to significantly improve food security in affected communities.
5. The local community aims to achieve a significant increase in sporting and cultural achievement which will improve mental health, physical well-being and competitiveness in affected schools.

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CAPTION:

FROM LEFT: Dr Zilla North (Department of Education), Dehran Swart (UCT), Lynn Le Grange (Department of Education), Councillor Raybin Figland (Executive Deputy Mayor of George), Alderman Leon van Wyk (Executive Mayor of George), Pall Rikhardsson (From Iceland, CEO of Planet Youth), Dr Herman Reuter (UCT and Sahara), Jonel Kerspuy (Planet Youth Programme)

In January, municipalities reflect not only on the results of the first half of the current financial year but also on the previous financial year that ended on 30 June.

We have achieved another clean audit for the 2021/22 financial year. This is an important achievement as it helps in our endeavours to procure additional grant funding to further improve our infrastructure. As our municipality grows and we successfully implement and maintain our infrastructure while ensuring good governance, we progressively seek to qualify for larger grants that are also earmarked for the larger intermediate and metropolitan cities.

Our draft annual report for 2021/22 which provides an insight into the past year’s activities and achievements is in an advanced state of preparation prior to public release.

During the July-December 2022 period, it is already evident how load-shedding has impacted negatively on revenue through lower electricity sales resulting from not having Eskom power for 6-10 hours per day. Businesses are also likely to be similarly affected. To exacerbate this further, there are additional costs associated with the diesel purchased to operate generators at the various water and wastewater treatment plants and pump stations.

Through the gloom of load-shedding, we recently received indications that an international company will shortly commence business operations in George and start hiring and training staff. I also had the privilege along with a few senior colleagues to attend a presentation by Harvard University’s Growth Lab team on how they utilise data on business activities to focus on potential economic sectors that can provide strong growth opportunities for a city. Although George falls outside of the 1022 cities worldwide with populations of over 300000 that are already incorporated into their data sets, the Growth Lab already has access to some relevant data on George. This presentation will no doubt spur our outreach to gain insight into business sectors that could grow employment in our economy.

Over the past weeks, we have continued our interactions with the Western Cape Government and key role-players internationally to explore the acceleration of implementing renewable energy projects that will benefit the George economy. It is crucial too that the business and agricultural sectors, in particular, engage with us on their challenges with load-shedding to maintain their production levels. It is becoming important for business to communicate their electricity capacity needs as we jointly search for solutions through collaboration and partnerships. The challenges include technical feasibility, the ability to connect to the grid, environmental approvals, legislative requirements, funding sources and identifying a range of power suppliers.

Stakeholders with challenges or parties who are interested in offering practical solutions are welcome to use the supportbusiness@george.gov.za email address as a point of contact to facilitate a discussion.

Ald Leon van Wyk

Executive Mayor of George

The Department of Water and Sanitation’s (DWS) Blue Drop programme which was established to encourage continued progress and to acknowledge excellence in drinking water services management in South Africa is in progress, and the George Municipality`s first round of evaluations took place from Tuesday 17 January to Wednesday 18 January 2023.

The Blue Drop and Green Drop Certification Programmes are forms of Incentive-based Regulation (IBR) pioneered by the South African Water Sector since 2008. legislation, Water Services Act; Act 108 of 1997, Section 82 d, e & f. The programme seeks to focus on Improvement in Performance, Compliance and Efficiency.

According to the Deputy Director for Water and Sanitation in the Civil Engineering Services Department in the George Municipality, Deon de Jager, the Blue Drop Certification is intended to monitor the drinking water quality supplied to consumers countrywide. “Both water quality and administrative aspects are combined in this certification with the emphasis being on the administrative aspects instead of water quality and George has put all the ducks in a row to be evaluated.”

“The first-round assessments for the upcoming Blue Drop evaluations were held on 17 and 18 January 2023.  After the first-round evaluations, the DWS will, if necessary, allow the George Municipality to implement and report on corrective measures to be implemented, to enable the Municipality to correct and submit the required information,” de Jager added.  The second-round discussions on the corrective measures will take place on 28 February 2023 after which the George Municipality will receive (if successful) its final Blue Drop certification/score.

De Jager confirmed that the revised water safety plans and treatment plant process audits have been completed, and the George Municipality was assisted by IX Engineers and Chris Swartz consultants.  “All relevant personnel reporting to DWS have been registered on the IRIS reporting system.  The George Municipal Water Treatment and Laboratory sections are working around the clock to ensure that we comply with all legislative requirements as set out by the DWS.  Furthermore, the George Municipality is still in the process of performing process audits on all its raw and potable water pump stations, towers, and storage reservoirs.”

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CAPTION:

From Left to Right: Deon de Jager (Deputy Director: Water and Sewer Services), Melvin Koopman (Senior Superintendent: Water Treatment), Geoffrey Bredenkamp (Manager:  Water Treatment), Dewald van Staden (DWS Lead Inspector), Nkosinathi Masilela (Inspector DWS), Tladi Dineo (Inspector DWS), Randy Wesso (Manager Laboratory Services), Alton Michaels (Consultant SMEC Engineering Group)