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JUST SA KwaZulu-Natal - Bhekani Hadebe · TIPS Podcast

• 0:05
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to the Trade and Industrial Policy Strategies official podcast Tips Talk, the show where we delve into the fascinating world of economics and its impact on global development.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_01: I'm your host, Tobanike, and today we are asking why it is important for local and provincial government officials in Guazul Natal to understand the impact of climate change and the imperative to decarbonize our economy as well as make that transition just.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_01: We are finding ourselves in Devon, and today we see how government officials can turn policy into action.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_01: This recording is recorded on Teams due to logistic limitations.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_01: Today I have a lovely guest by the name of Begani Hatebe.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_01: Can you please introduce yourself, Begani, to our audience?
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, thank you, my brother.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: My name is Pegani Hatebe, senior manager at TWD municipality, responsible for the management and operation and maintenance of high voltage infrastructure within the electricity.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_01: All right, all right.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_01: So on your day-to-day, what does your day look like in terms of just responsibilities in the position and office that you are in?
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: On a daily basis, my duties involve the management of staff, which is staff that are responsible for the maintenance and operation of the high voltage network, which involves a staff component of about uh 78.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: And also on my side, I'd ensure that I maintain the grid, the high voltage grid of a Teeguini municipality, to ensure that it's maintained in a good position and state, it's able to provide power from ESCOM and also distribute it down to our consumers, which are our industrial areas, including the commercial and also the domestic people or our residentials, as we call them.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: So my duty is to ensure that the grid is able to provide power at all times.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: The power is available 24-7.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: So I've got the team that work during the normal hours and the team that always work even after hours to ensure that when the power is down, they are able to quickly restore power to those affected communities or areas, and we are able to actually generate a revenue from there.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: And so, over and above that, now that we know that all municipalities or the country as a whole is transitioned towards the renewable.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: So as the person who's in operation is to also ensure that when the application for these renewables comes in, our substation are in good position to actually integrate with the renewables.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: So as we speak, we've got a huge backlog of maintenance that might hinder those applications.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: So we're trying to make sure that we push for maintenance to be done on time so that by the time we receive this application, we are in a position to say our grid is in a good state to accept or to connect the application for the renewables.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Mr.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yate.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_01: My second question would be so, in all that you are responsible for, how do you infuse the just transition policies in your line of work?
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, on my side, um how we infuse the just transition policies, we infuse it by evolving our substation from being, you know, in the past we know that the substation were like a passive.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: They sit there as a hardware and then sit there and do nothing.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: So we ensure that now that we are designed to for power to flow in one direction from the substation to the consumer down there.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: But now, with the new requirement now for just the energy transition, we must consider now the two-directional flow.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: So it means the power will flow from the consumer back to the substation itself when they're selling the power to us.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: And it also we must make sure that we've got all the protection device on our side, think on the technical side.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: The protection device should be able to detect the fault that is coming from the consumer when they're feeding power to our side and also detect when we send power down to the consumer.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: So we need to also consider on our side that we have got the smart systems, protection system, and equipment that are able to now evolve as we're moving, because now we need to protect the grid itself to ensure that by introducing this renewable, we don't find ourselves being in a situation where we're destroying what is already existing.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: So we basically, in short, we're modernizing our grid because we know that without the grid being modern, we aren't able to connect the rate.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: Or if we connect the rate, we'll have issues that will actually cause our infrastructure or damage our infrastructure.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: So, like for instance, we are now currently busy with the projects to introduce a number of renewable, also the battery energy storage.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: So, over and above that, we are also looking at repurposing the old substation sites that were there, which are not no longer used.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: We're doing a study to look and see if we can use those sites for renewable energy, like uh the solar PVs, or we can use them for battery energy storage.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: And then moreover on our side, we already started to actually educate our staff.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: As we speak, I'm running a project of installing the renewable energy in all our substations.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: We've got over 100 high voltage substations.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: We want to install the renewable energy with solar PV to ensure that the simple thing like to light up security lighting around the stations, they get power from these solar PVs that will also be going together with the batteries and inverters.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: So by that, I'm educating the staff, even the staff on the lower level now, they see that actually the renewable energy or the solar PVs is the future.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's something that we have to, you know, roll out in all our sites.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: Over and above that, we also, you know, sometimes deal with the community in those areas because our substations are located in various communities in the area.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: So we engage some communities in those areas also to educate them before the project starts that, okay, in this community we are intending to do this project, and it will, what will be the benefit for the community?
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: So, in that it also educates the community in that around the area, that there are opportunities that are there for cleaner, you know, energy.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: So if they are interested, they can also, because normally when we go out on tender, it's an open tender for the public.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: We tell them, colleagues, we will be advertising this if you are got the skills and you know, the required single skills and everything you can apply.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: So, in that way, it gives the community also an opportunity to have access to such you know project and also learn from this project together with us.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_01: So, do you see in terms of just challenges and opportunities in your municipality and in the nature of work?
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_01: I also heard you say you are also doing a study.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_01: So I just want you to maybe speak on things that you see as opportunities and challenges for this just transition in your province and in your municipality.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: Let me start with the challenges.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think there are challenges within the municipality itself.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: And uh that also brings uh about a fear, you know, to us as technical people and our executives.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: One of the challenges is we know that now with the transition, so a lot of the IPP will be selling power back to the customer, which will be a municipality.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: That way it means then that municipality might also lose revenue, especially on the say charge, because we know that uh the bulk of our revenue used to come from service charge, yeah.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: Say charge, what we call it.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: So now, if we don't have like let's say most of our customers they generate power from themselves, so that means they will be selling power to us.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, we won't be able to recover that.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: But now that's the fear that we have.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: But through research, we are able to see and that there is an opportunity there, as much as there's an actually a risk or revenue loss, but there's an opportunity for us to review our tariff to ensure that through the right tariff, we should be able to also to be able to say break even or even make profit because we'll be using the same grid to actually allow customers.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: We can charge those that are selling power to us for using our grid because they don't have cables.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: So now we need to shift from be you selling the kilowatt hour and look at the opportunity of uh using the cables themselves for us to make with money.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: So that's the risk that we have seen on our side.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: But another also challenge to put it, it's the backlog.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: You know, as municipality, we've got a huge backlog, maintenance backlog on our side.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: So the issue is if we do not actually invest on maintaining our asset, when the base renewable or clean energy projects come in into the network, we want people to be in a position to connect them because our grid resistance are not stable.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: So by introducing the renewable, then we will cause problems.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: So those are the issues that we need to uh work together as a counterinfect, all over that's the challenge that I think it affects a lot of municipalities out there.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: So that we need to ensure that our equipment are well maintained to absorb these viable and renewable resources.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_01: What would you say is a cause maybe of the backlog?
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: There are multiple causes to the backlog.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: On our side, for instance, budget is number one.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: Almost every year, because every year we prepare a budget.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: So when I prepare budgets, I know how much I need.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: Because the international standard says, okay, on our side, since we're maintaining the grid, we should at least spend five to say 10% of the asset replacement failure.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: So when I do that and present to the executive, they always say, okay, we do hear you, but we only have so much.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: We can only be able to give you so much.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: So we can't give you what we do not have.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: So the issue is funding.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: We do not have enough budget to maintain the network.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: That's number one.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: One of the keys to it on our side.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: Because in terms of the skill and the expertise, we do have expert and the skills, and we also allowed to get resources from outside.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_01: You can continue with the challenges that you were mentioning.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_01: I was just curious about that backlog.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, then I think uh I was gonna touch on the funding uh as another challenge.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: We do not have enough funding for the current existing network to maintain it.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I think I foresee a challenge also to get when we want to roll out this renewable project.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think as we speak, yeah, I think there is a challenge because by now we should have, as uh as a Twin, we should have had already our 400, say, megawatt that was anticipated by now that it would be on the ground.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: As we speak, that project is not yet started, but there are a lot of work that is being done on the background, which means that there are delays and could be the funding issue or other delays in the approval stages.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: Another challenge might be a social challenge, I think I would say the fear of say people losing jobs, you know, with renewable energy, because we know that there are a lot of people that are employed by ESCOM.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: Say, for instance, we've got a lot of IPPs in Devon.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: So it means we are actually buying locally.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: All those people that were employed to maintain our network, some of them we might say, okay, they we don't need you.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: We might cut the stuff down because we're buying from wherever, for the IPPs in the area.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: And also ESCOM, you know, as a whole country, those that are in the mines, they'll lose their job.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: Drivers for this thing for trucks might lose their job because there'll be no need now to transport coal from Bumalanga to various uh power stations.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: So those are the risks or challenges that I foresee in the near future.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: But coming to the opportunities, because wherever the challenge there is, also another opportunity.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: So the opportunity in this case, as municipality, I think it's a direct procurement from the IPP rather than from one monopoly.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: So as we speak now, there's one monopoly which is ESCOM.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: If ESCOM is not doing well, municipality by default will not do well.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: So if ESCOM collapse, municipality will collapse because we won't be able to get power from ESO.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: So now this will give us an opportunity to buy from various IPPs and we'll assist municipalities to be able also to negotiate the price.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: The price will be lower because now the um what do you call this, the transmission cost from Impumalanga to here will be cut out because the generation will take place within the metro.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: We save a lot of money there.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: So I foresee there'll be a lot of savings that municipality would get, will buy cheaper, and we'll be able to negotiate price.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: And also the whole economic value chain, you know, transitioning from the current existing grid to renewable will assist us in terms of ensuring that there are new opportunities and new skills that will be required for engineers.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: For instance, there will be like sector for green, hydrogen, electric vehicle manufacturing, all those.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: So it will require that we upskill ourselves.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_00: So there's an option for us to upskill ourselves to ensure that we align with the future.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: So creating even more opportunity for others that want to venture into business to EVs, like charging station and also manufacturing of those vehicles and actually battery storage.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: So then another opportunity that we foresee in our area is that there'll be an opportunity to have microgrid.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: Like we've got in our area, a lot of areas are within the township and then urban areas and also a little bit of rural areas.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: So those areas that are far away from the city centers or the lot centers, they will have an opportunity to actually create the IPP or microgrids in those areas.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: For instance, informal settlement.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: Why not roll out all the projects there to install the what do you call this uh solar PVs and then let them be fed from that micro grid?
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: So this will allow access for those that were in the past not connected, especially rural areas.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: So this is another opportunity there.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: Then uh another opportunity that I foresee on my side is that uh is the modernizing of the grid itself.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_00: We know that the grid before it used to be not modern in terms of moving it to digital.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: All the assets were analog, they're still there, and then send power in one direction, no communication between the customer and the you know the station itself.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: Now we'll have a system or stations.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: I foresee substation being smart in a way that there would be uh bi-direction communication from the customer itself to the station and into that system that would be monitoring all that.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: And there'll be a lot of multiple.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: So with that, then it comes energy trading.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: So there's an opportunity for those that want to be going into that space of energy trading and over and above that, energy wheeling.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: So I foresee a lot of for those opportunities where IPP drawback and decide to wheel their energy to sell it to our customer here in Tempen using the wheeleding, the energy wheeling actually the framework.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: So, yeah, those are the opportunities that I foresee that are there for us as municipalities, of which we need to take them with both hands and move because the change is inevitable.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, we will have to change if we want to decarbonize the whole country or the whole weight, as we said.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, thank you, Mr.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_01: Haddev.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_01: I like the idea of smart cities that are able to foster easy communication with the consumers.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_01: Because sometimes when we have issues with power, it takes forever to communicate and report problems that you might have.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_01: I also like the idea of IPPs because it is true that if one monopoly is maybe not performing well, it affects everybody.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_01: But if we have different power sources and producers, you know, life can go on, we will not be impacted as much or all of us at once.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_01: But it's like we can source things from different producers.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_01: So I like those opportunities that you were mentioning.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe as uh we depart, because that was my last question.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_01: Do you have maybe any final comments?
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_00: So, no, my final comment was just to say thank you for arranging this and thanks to the organization.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, I was in aware that such organization that you know pushed this.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_00: We know that we need a lot of you out there actually to be driving this change that is uh you know necessary for the country or and the whole world that is necessary.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: So I think yeah, I keep up the good work and we'll love to see your visibility all over, even in the areas where our communities where I come from, in rural areas where we know that information does not come easily to them because of the communication and also um the means of communication, like teams, which officially some of them they don't even have access to that.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: So if maybe in future you look at going to those areas, maybe with banners and whatever, and uh put people together and also share the same thing.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: That will change a lot of people and the communities out there.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for that suggestion, I'm still and thank you for availing yourself for this podcast.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_01: A huge thank you to our guests for sharing their expertise and time with us, and also for attending this training.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_01: We hope you will continue to champion the mandate of greening the economy in a just and equitable way.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_01: And to our listeners, your support means the world.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for joining the Trade and Industrial Policy Strategies official podcast.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_01: Remember, sustainable growth is not just a goal, but a path to a more resilient and prosperous future.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_01: Don't forget to subscribe, leave a review, and connect with us on YouTube, Apple, and Spotify.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_01: Until next time, I'm Tobanike signing off.