Combined electricity and water supply strategy for the department of water affairs

In the recent years various Demand Side Management (DSM) projects were successfully completed on Department of Water Affairs (DWA) pump schemes. Each pump scheme consists of a number of pump stations which transfer water to power stations in the Mpumalanga Highveld area and municipal off-takes. The pump stations in a scheme are interconnected via rivers and pipe lines in order to transfer water from national key-point dams to different water users. Therefore, to manage the Highveld's water balance, all the interconnecting schemes work together to keep the important dams at a maximum operating level. Introducing load management on these sites, local- and regional strategies were developed and rolled out. Local strategies involve upgrades to existing pump stations, while regional strategies involve the interactions of the different pump schemes. With the completion of the local strategies, regional strategies for combined water balance and energy optimisation can be developed. By building a system that is more ‘visible’, data is automatically collected. This will then be used to develop an advanced management strategy for the DWA. Therefore, in this article an overview is given on completed load management projects, planned future projects and the strategy to develop a combined electricity and water supply strategy for the DWA.