Complementing and offsetting energy opportunities for the South African water sector

The South African water sector is dependent on one source of electricity supply which makes it vulnerable to load shedding, shortage of supply and increasing steep tariffs. A Water Research Commission study has identified that municipalities have no backup plans for their major electricity requirements. Diversifying and complementing this input is of vital importance to the water sector and is also an opportunity to reduce the input costs to provision of water services. The opportunity for producing or generating energy sits within the water services environment as a huge untapped potential, with an estimated 10,000MW from all wastewaters nationally and at least 10MW of conduit hydropower from the metros.
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