The people of Frankfort, a rural Free State town that has had large solar panels installed to mitigate the effects of load-shedding, are locked in a court battle with Eskom, which opposes the move.
Town officials have described the utility as selfish, confusing and ignorant of the community’s needs.
Earlier this year, Rural Maintenance Free State, contracted to manage Mafube Local Municipality’s electricity network on behalf of the municipality, implemented a trial solar system project aimed at reducing the effect of load-shedding in Frankfort through a system of “voiding”.
This allows the company to manage the town’s own load-shedding schedule, a move that was reportedly initially approved by Eskom. This resulted in the town having fewer outages, with the alternative power produced by a private solar facility powering the city during scheduled load-shedding hours.
This project has protected water and sewage pumps from load-shedding.`
When the solar farm, owned by Frankfort Renewables (FF Renewables), produces more power than required to be cut during load-shedding, then blackouts are suspended in the town.
The project was implemented on a three-month trial basis in February, after an apparent agreement with Eskom, but the state utility backtracked a month later, saying what the company put forward is not what they had understood it to be. They have called for the National Energy Regulatory of SA’s (Nersa) intervention.
Eskom had reportedly threatened to disconnect the town if it did not stop the project pending Nersa’s decision on its legality.
Rural Free State filed an urgent application in the Gauteng high court, Johannesburg, to allow them to continue with the initiative until Nersa made its decision.
In court papers seen by TimesLIVE Premium, Eskom accuses Rural Maintenance, its Free State subsidiary, and the Mafube municipality and business forum of “acting in bad faith and in breach of its agreement with Eskom that they would implement load-shedding”.
“Eskom engaged the applicants to conclude an agreement that the second applicant [Rural Free State] would implement load-shedding on behalf of the municipality.
“Throughout these negotiations, the second applicant omitted to disclose that it intended to implement voiding once the agreement was concluded. However, mere days after the agreement was concluded, the second applicant wrote to Eskom to inform it that it had unilaterally decided that it was entitled to implement voiding,” it said.
Rural Maintenance denied Eskom’s claim, saying it had followed all due processes and commenced with the project with Eskom’s knowledge.
The company’s Gouws Marais, head of renewables, said: “What happened was where electricity was feeding from Eskom into the network, they just shut it down there. Which means that all the pumps, the sewerage, the water were shut down. The whole town was a black box.
“So we then said to them, ‘We will do our own load-shedding in town. We’ll divide it in zones, we have five zones. If it is stage four or whatever and this is the number of hours that each individual/businesses will have to be without electricity ... we will see to it that it happens.
“We then did a quick survey and the residents said they would rather have more frequent lights out but for shorter periods because then the fridges don’t wear down. So we agreed and instead of 2-2½ hours, we do it at 1½ hour cycles. So we then kept the schedule so that people can plan,” Marais said.
He explained that this was met with positive reaction from frustrated community members and businesses, who then appealed to the company for a more sustainable solution.
This collaboration resulted in the building of a photovoltaic (PV) plant, through FF Renewables, on land purchased by Rural Maintenance and which was initially meant to be used for a planned mixed development project.
The plant was then temporarily repurposed to assist the town with its energy needs.
“The electricity from the PV plant gets pushed into town ... If we get to stage four, we still can provide, on a sunny day, enough energy not to have any load-shedding because we feed behind the Eskom meter into the network. If it’s cloudy and in the evening time, obviously there’s no generation, so we load-shed,” Marais said, adding this only worked up to stage four.
“Eskom’s main beef now is that the demand, because of the PV plant, has changed. So let’s say its [demand] was 10MW and now we have pumped in 4MW, so now the demand is 6MW. So that four is already calculated into their load profile. They say that it causes instability on the national grid, which we dispute ... and they can’t really explain [their rationale],” he said.
The company insisted that the proposal for self-load-shedding and voiding were discussed with Eskom.
Rural Maintenance’s confusion and frustration is shared by residents, farmers and businesses in Frankfort.
One of those people is Zakhali Mzolo, a resident of Phomolong ward 7 in Namahadi.
“Load-shedding is the worst monster we’ve ever faced because there’s high level of theft that happens when the power goes out.
“It affects us badly and to a point that we’ve accepted that we’ll live with it for the rest of our lives. When Rural implemented voiding, the community was initially confused and struggled to understand the alternative schedule but became excited once we understood how it would work,” she said.
Mzolo, who’s lived in Namahadi her entire life, praised the initiative for the fact that instead of cutting the sections supplied by Rural Free State all at once, it was done according to sections so that part of the township had power while the other was shed.
“It allows people to plan their daily lives better. Even those relying on Eskom for power are envious of this system,” she explained.
“They’re just starting out with this, but the aim is to end load-shedding here, so we need to be patient and give them time to figure it out.”
Mzolo branded Eskom’s reaction to the move as selfish and ignorant of the community’s needs. She stressed that this project was “working for the community”.
Irrigation farmer Hans Pretorius, who’s also lived in the municipality his entire life, said load-shedding had forced farmers like him to change their farming methods and often make less profit from the switch.
“We are irrigation farmers, so load-shedding is unfortunately a disaster. When you plant winter crops [wheat], you need a lot of water because it’s out of the rainy season. We farm in a summer rainfall area. So the winter crop totally depends on irrigation. In the beginning, it’s not that crucial, but towards the end of the crop, it starts flowering, then you cannot afford any load-shedding.
“So the only alternative is to plant a dry land crop [soya beans, maize] that doesn’t need that much water, but your yield can be 50% less than usual. It’s not profitable, so it’s really a disaster,” he stressed.
Pretorius, one of the founding members of the Mafube Business Forum, said the solar facility was yet to benefit farmers, and the plan was to initiate it through a planned project in the neighbouring town of Villiers.
He too said Eskom’s rationale made “no sense at all”, especially given the countrywide electricity shortage.
“The community and Rural invested R100m in a solar farm to solve the problem, and now all of a sudden they have all of these excuses that don’t make sense at all to prevent us from using that energy,” he said.
DA shadow energy minister and MP Kevin Mileham conducted a site visit on Tuesday and met the various stakeholders to discuss the matter.
He said while the party was yet to familiarise itself with the court matter, Frankfort’s measures addressed a pressing need affecting South Africans.
“The real issue is that SA needs more electricity now and we need to be incentivising and encouraging every attempt to produce more electricity.
“We’ve got to take the roadblocks out of the way. We need to be making it easier, cheaper and more cost-effective for people to install their own electricity and reduce the demand and burden on Eskom so we can fix our Eskom fleet,” he said.
Eskom is essentially fighting for their share of revenue. I don’t believe it’s down to grid instability.
— DA MP Kevin Mileham
Mileham said Eskom’s argument of grid instability was just an excuse to mask the real motive for wanting to stop the project, which was a potential loss of revenue.
“Eskom is essentially fighting for their share of revenue. I don’t believe it’s down to grid instability,” he said.
Mileham added that “depending on the outcome of the court case”, the party was “ready to join Rural Maintenance and the residents of Frankfort in any subsequent court challenges that they may embark on to protect their right to free themselves from Eskom load-shedding”.
“It is completely unacceptable that three years after the publication of the electricity regulations on new generation capacity, allowing municipalities in good financial standing to generate their own electricity, Eskom has decided to act like a village bully and keep the town of Frankfort within the grip of its load-shedding embrace.
Eskom declined to respond to TimesLIVE Premium’s queries, saying it “is not in a position to engage on the matter” as is the norm with court cases.
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