Service Delivery

Dignity for residents through water and sanitation

About a million eThekwini residents are supplied with water by the municipality on a daily basis. The City is continually looking for innovative ways to provide services to customers.

The hard work that has been put in over the years has been recognised through the many awards and acknowledgements the City has received. Initiatives such as free basic water, water amnesty, flow limiters, the use of plasticbodied water meters, polypropylene water piping, ground tanks and semi-pressure water service levels and urine diversion toilets are some of the ways the City is achieving this.

Other initiatives include anaerobic baffled reactors, the use of greywater for urban agriculture, customer services agents, and condominial sewerage. The City’s Customer Water Debt Repayment Policy was the first such implement to be introduced in South Africa.

Water services Water is provided to 573 941 formal households and 387 161 informal and rural households, at a total of 961 122. According to Stats SA, there are a total of 1 159 272 households in eThekwini Municipality. The municipality currently maintains and manages 327 water storage facilities from which water is delivered through an extensive distribution network supported by 98 pump stations and five purification works.

The Water and Sanitation Unit is guided by the Water Services Development Plan, which seeks to ensure the efficient, affordable, economical, and sustainable provision of water services. The Water Services Development Plan deals with socio-economic, technical, financial, institutional, and environmental issues as they pertain to water services provisioning.

Wastewater sanitation services EThekwini Municipality operates 27 wastewater treatment plants and 300 pump stations, treating over 500 million litres of wastewater per day. The backlog in providing sanitation services has progressed from 159 618 in 2015/16 to 198 150 in May 2021. This is due to the ongoing influx of people into the municipal area. The municipality has introduced new and innovative methods to advance the delivery of services to residents. These solutions include urine diversion toilets, the reuse of greywater for agriculture, dedicated customer service agents, electronic workflow programmes, and specialised call centres. Informal settlements are also part of the provision of water and sanitation services.

A total of 1 600 ablution facilities across 78 wards have been built, complete with shower facilities and toilets. Moreover, local communities were employed to supervise and to keep the facilities clean. A total of 1 650 permanent employment opportunities were created after construction of these ablution facilities.

These ablution facilities provide access to running water, baths, showers, toilets, hand basins and external wash troughs. Each facility consists of two modified containers, so that there are separate male and female blocks. The installation of ablution facilities in informal settlements was implemented by the City with the aim of providing basic waterborne sanitation to informal settlements. The municipal authority also took the decision to provide people with a range of basic interim services while they await formal houses.

Addressing water infrastructure backlogs

The municipality has, as part of its Infrastructure Planning, documented the nature and extent of the urban and rural backlogs in service delivery across the entire metropolitan area, using digital records held by the Municipality together with input from communities and councillors.

Lighting up communities

EThekwini’s electricity supply over the past five years saw a steady increase in the number of customers supplied. With just over 700 000 customers before 2016, the City has since gained over 50 000 new patrons.

This growth in customer numbers naturally comes with great demand for consistent service from residential, industrial, and business customers. To cater to this, the City has introduced additional avenues of communicating with its customers to ensure quality service. The eThekwini

Power proposal interest

KwaZulu-Natal has a strong market for power generation. This follows proposals that were submitted through the Request for Information for the possible procurement of 400 MW of power from independent power producers. Sbu Ntshalintshali, manager: Renewable Energy, said the City received “overwhelming support from various organisations, from private developers to finance institutions within the country and at an international level.” The programme generated interest from 104 potential projects, of which 96 projects fall under energy generation, and eight projects represent finance. The 96 power generation projects represent a combined capacity to power the City nine times.

Electricity Unit’s Contact Centre introduced a 24-hour WhatsApp line to provide customers with an additional interactive platform when reporting faults. While exploring digital ways of business, eThekwini Electricity also introduced interactive links, one of which is dedicated to assisting customers to submit their meter readings. The other helps with alerting customers when there is load-shedding.

Keeping the lights on In serving those who need it most, more than 100 000 customers benefit from the City’s Free Basic Electricity (FBE) programme. EThekwini Municipality awards indigent customers with 65 kWh FBE per month (which is 15 kWh more than the amount awarded by national government). FBE beneficiaries also purchase electricity at just R1.36, instead of the normal tariff cost of R2.09. This further assists communities who cannot afford electricity to keep their lights on.

Over the past five years, approximately six million electricity tokens have been issued. To keep communities safe through a consistent supply of power, the Municipality has over the years worked to upgrade power capacity in communities that were prone to power cuts. This was done by ensuring substations have sufficient supply for the areas. The unit has also done great work to reroute cables that were mostly found in informal settlements to help curb cable theft and power cuts.

Addressing electricity infrastructure backlogs

The municipality aims to deliver 8 000 to 14 000 connections on an annual basis, but this is dependent on the rollout of subsidies. There are two main imperatives in the implementation of electricity programmes: the first is to address the backlogs that currently exist and the second is to align the delivery of electricity with new human settlements projects.

Some see automation as the domain of the future, while the truth is that automation is already here and is a key aspect of modern industrial and utility activity. Automation controllers are integral components that ensure the effective running of operations.

The versatile SEL-3350 is a great fit for panels with limited rack space and users who are looking for a hardened, costeffective yet flexible controller to run their choice of operating system (OS). The SEL-3350 can be configured as a RealTime Automation Controller (RTAC), as a Blueframe application platform, or to run Microsoft Windows and Linux OSs.

Designed, manufactured and tested to the same standards as SEL’s protective relays, the SEL-3350 withstands the harsh environments in utility substations, industrial control systems, and automation systems. It also comes with an industryleading 10-year warranty and is made to the highest quality standards in the USA.

Reliable, available, serviceable Focused on running dedicated embedded applications that require 24/7 availability, the SEL-3350 is designed around RAS – reliability, availability and serviceability. Reliability: SEL designs, manufactures and tests all its automation controllers in the USA to ensure they can withstand harsh conditions, including temperatures ranging from –40°C to +85°C, up to 15 kV of electrostatic discharge (ESD), fast transients, high electromagnetic interference, vibration, and shock up to 15 Gs. All SEL automation controllers conform to or exceed IEC 61850-3, IEEE C37.90, IEEE 1613, and IEC 60255 standards and are backed by a 10-year, no-questionsasked warranty. Availability: With the SEL-3350, you can monitor and alarm for numerous system services and conditions through the included programmable Microsoft Windows Management Infrastructure (MI)/Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) interface and configurable alarm service, Backup and Recovery Tool (BaRT), and watchdog timer to minimise downtime, with automatic recovery from system crashes. Serviceability: You can also perform diagnostics, change out solid-state drives (SSDs), and install software and an OS. Additionally, SEL’s System Monitor (SysMon) logs events specific to the installed system to aid in quick recovery.

Applications RTAC: Order the SEL-3350 as an RTAC for secure automation applications, such as a substation HMI or SCADA remote terminal unit (RTU), or for data concentration or event collection. Blueframe: Improve your power system OT network management, simplify security patches, and ensure availability using the SEL Blueframe application platform. You can configure SEL automation controllers (SEL-3350, SEL-3355, and SEL-3360) with Blueframe to manage and operate SEL containerised applications, like data management and automation (DMA) applications.

Taking control of automation

The SEL-3350 is a versatile automation controller that is ideal for embedded applications that require midlevel I/O and computation.

Information processor – data concentrator/protocol converter: Seamlessly and flexibly concentrate data and convert protocols with any SEL automation controllers and a wide range of data concentration and protocol conversion software. Kiosk: Select the SEL-3350 for remote user applications that require the power of a dedicated high-performance automation controller. With its small 1U form factor, the SEL-3350 packs the computing power your application needs into a limited space. Passive cooling and a wide temperature range mean it is possible to install SEL automation controllers in locations where off-the-shelf computers will not survive. With a projected mean time between failures (MTBF) of over 300 years, the SEL-3350 can operate with little or no maintenance, making it ideal for unattended operation. Engineering workstation: Choose an SEL automation controller as your engineering workstation platform to get a reliable and robust system suitable for the harshest environments. You can view and change IED settings, view report and event data, and easily access diagram drawings and documents on-site. In addition, you can securely and remotely access the engineering workstation using Windows Remote Desktop, Secure Shell (SSH), or out-of-band management with Intel Active Management Technology (AMT) KeyboardVideo-Mouse (KVM) over IP. HMI visualisation, monitoring and control: Use the SEL-3350 to make a secure system visualisation, monitoring, and control point for your substation or plant. You can leverage CIS Security Benchmarks settings to meet NERC CIP and other industry compliance standards.

OS options The SEL-3350 supports various OS installation options. The controller can be purchased as hardware without an OS installed, providing flexibility to install your own custom OS image.

The SEL-3350 supports several factoryinstalled configurations, including RTAC functionality, the Blueframe application platform, and Microsoft Windows 10 IoT Enterprise and Windows Server OSs. SEL network and serial port drivers are available to support the installation of third-party Linux OSs. The SEL OS options available are: • RTAC* • Blueframe*. Third-party supported OS options are: • Microsoft Windows 10 IoT Enterprise* • Microsoft Windows Server 2019 Standard* • Red Hat Enterprise Linus • CentOS Linux • Ubuntu LTS • Hypervisor supported options: • Microsoft Hyper-V • Linux KVM. *These are factory-orderable OS’s.

Accessories A number of peripherals (e.g., mouse, keyboard and touchscreen monitor) are available direct from SEL as accessories. Accessories should not de-rate the operational specifications of the product, such as temperature, shock, vibration, etc.

About SEL Inc.

Making Electric Power Safer, More Reliable, and More Economical

SEL (Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories) specialises in creating digital products and systems that protect, control, and automate power systems around the world. This technology prevents blackouts and improves power system reliability and safety at a reduced cost. A 100% employee-owned company headquartered in Pullman, Washington, SEL serves customers worldwide. As part of a commitment to designing and manufacturing reliable, high-quality products, the company researches, designs, builds, tests, distributes, teaches and supports each of its technologies at SEL facilities. Assembled SEL products travel directly from the company’s hands to where they need to be, so that you and your customers can rely on them to keep critical systems fully operational.