Bitou to take charge of power demand
As South Africa’s energy crisis continues, Bitou Municipality will soon be able assist in taking some pressure off the national grid after successfully rolling out a geyser control switch initiative.
Dubbed the Residential Load Management (RLM) project, it involved the installation of geyser control switches which will allow the municipality to remotely turn off residents’ geysers for between 20 and 40 minutes during peak demand times – thus shifting electricity demand out of these high-use periods.
Through a partnership between Bitou and Eskom, 970 new geyser relays were installed and 780 old relays that had been installed in the 1990s were reconnected with the aim of saving about 1MW of electricity. The project was funded entirely by energy regulator Nersa.
As part of the regular and necessary testing requirements before the commissioning of the system, the Institute of Technology at Ford Hare University will now undertake measurement and verification tests.
Project manager Willie Botha, from Energy Insight, said the geyser control units in the Plettenberg Bay area would be switched off for five minutes every half an hour for the duration of one month as part of the notch tests.