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Johannesburg - Rolling electricity blackouts have become an almost daily occurrence in South Africa, but a technology company says Eskom could manage power cuts better.
Regular load shedding has hit South Africa this year as state owned power utility Eskom grapples with a lack of available capacity to deal with demand.
Several power stations have been breaking down owing to a lack of maintenance while additional generation capacity from the likes of Medupi has yet to come online because of construction delays.
In the meantime, South Africans are left to suffer with the crisis and study Eskom and municipalities’ load shedding schedules to find out when their lights will go out.
But Mohamed Cassoojee - who is Software AG's Vice-President and Country Manager for South Africa - says Eskom could install customised software to help it with maintenance and proactively preventing infrastructure from breaking down.
Cassoojee has said hi-tech software could help Eskom make smarter decisions based on real-time analytics systems while also managing meter data, outage alert systems, customer database information, system and workforce optimisation, cycle times and efficiencies of various departments. Meanwhile, sensors at power stations could further feed data into analytics software to help with determining when problems may occur, according to Cassoojee.
Cassoojee added that even by tapping into CCTV cameras in cities, software can determine when certain areas are experiencing high vehicle traffic and then limit the extent of load shedding in those districts. Software could even help Eskom with the likes of its supply chain for coal, if heavy rains impact on supplies in a certain area, Cassoojee said.
“I think that if we implement some drivers - which doesn't take that long - as long as the pieces are in place, within four to six months we could have a system that is a lot more predictable,” Cassoojee told Fin24.
“People can organise their lives around it and the inconvenience of not knowing we eradicate.
"And people will be a little more relaxed and a bit more supportive of getting the problem solved,” he said.
Cassoojee told Fin24 that Software AG has implemented similar systems for power companies in other parts of the world such as for Duke Energy, AEP and the Orlando Utility Commission.
Currently, Software AG also supplies some of its technology to Eskom but Cassoojee told Fin24 that his company is looking to expand its service offerings to the power utility.
"They use some of our process modelling and automation technologies. So that's in any type of word process or knowledge based activity that needs to take place, they can define it within our technologies and then everyone within work group can understand what needs to be done,” Cassoojee told Fin24.
Low tech load shedding
Energy expert Chris Yelland told Fin24 that the way load shedding is done currently in SA is not “very sophisticated at all”.
Eskom has a national control centre in Germiston, Gauteng where it has a complete overview of South Africa’s power system.
From here, Eskom determines what generation capacity is online and what is down for maintenance or unplanned outages. The centre also monitors electricity demand for the whole country.
Once demand exceeds supply, Eskom implements load shedding, which varies from cutting 1 000 MW in stage 1, 2 000 MW in stage 2 and 4 000 MW in a third stage.
The centre then sends instructions to various regional control centres across the country, and depending on how big the region is, it will be tasked with cutting a certain level of supply.
"All that happens really is these commands go out from national control to the regional centres to the large customers who are subject to load curtailment and to municipalities and to other customers that are subject to load shedding, and then it's rotated on a rotational basis,” Yelland told Fin24.
"It's not a high degree of sophistication,” he said.
Eskom spokespeople told Fin24 that its “load shedding schedules are automated-up to about 90%” and that it is “managed from the control centre, via software”.
However, several municipal areas have to cut the power manually when asked to load shed. This means an operator physically travels to a substation to switch the breaker on and off manually, according to Yelland.
Eskom has confirmed that manual switch offs do occur.
“Eskom schedules are automated, the challenge is within the municipal areas, that do this manually,” the power utility’s spokespeople told Fin24.
“Yes, Eskom can always improve, specifically if something goes wrong during the execution of the automated schedule,” said Eskom.
Equitable power cuts
Chris Yelland, though, said that while technology could help ease the pain of load shedding, it could also cause problems - especially if some areas are perceived to be less load shed than others.
"People will complain if one area gets load shed more than another,” Yelland told Fin24.
"There must be a rational way of doing it that it's equitable to all customer classes.
"In fact the law requires that all customer classes be treated fairly. There must be a rational reason why you load shed in a certain way. You can't just do it because you feel like,” Yelland said.
Yelland said that to avoid a national blackout, operators and technicians also have to react quickly, thus placing a need on the human element controlling the power utilities switches.
When electricity supply exceeds demand, Eskom’s system frequency will fall below 50 Hz and set off a series of trips.
“When demand exceeds supply, if you just leave it, things are going to start tripping out automatically because behind the manual load shedding system is an automatic so-called under-frequency load shedding system and this now takes out all the discretion away from the operator,” Yelland told Fin24.
“Things will just start tripping out according to preset settings, and it's very inconvenient and it's not done on a rotational basis etc.
“So, the first line of defence is a manual load shedding process; this is the command process from national control,” Yelland said.
Eskom also stressed the need for the human element in managing its power system.
“A human element is needed if failures occur during the execution process software can be trusted, but a contingency plan is needed in case of technical glitch. It’s all about finding a balance between technology and human interface,” Eskom told Fin24.
Nevertheless, Software AG’s Cassoojee concluded that its interest in easing load shedding also stems from its own operational needs in South Africa.
"We're as much impacted by the inconvenience of load shedding, so if we can contribute and work with any of the organisations to make things better we want to do them," Cassoojee said.
