Suck it up, Eskom tells Edgemead residents

HOME owners with an emergency power station on their doorstep will have to put up with it for a few more years.

This week, Eskom told residents in Edgemead, Cape Town, that it had to run the peaking station to keep the lights on.

Residents complained about the noise, smell and potential health risks.

Eskom’s parliamentary affairs manager, Carin de Villiers, said the plant had “worked more than it had in a very long time” in 2013. It operated for nearly 44 days last year — more than two hours a day if averaged out over 365 days. This was nearly double the time it ran in 2012.

Municipal councillor James Vos said: “Eskom should do the right thing and go back to its board . . . this plant is 37 years old. You need to take a decision to renew it or to move it.”

Henry Masimla, who lives next to the plant, agreed.

“I invite you to my house. Come and experience what we experience in the evening. The noise and air pollution needs to be tested at our houses.”

It emerged at the meeting that pollution levels were not measured at the homes of nearby residents. Monitoring stations run by the city were in neighbouring suburbs. Their air was also not tested for some carcinogenic compounds released by burning kerosene.

Eskom undertook to consider erecting a pollution-monitoring station at residents’ homes.

De Villiers said South Africa’s electricity supply was “precarious, to say the least”. A larger open-cycle turbine peaking plant on the West Coast, Ankerlig at Atlantis, was consuming 40 000 litres of diesel an hour per generating unit. “We have over the last couple of weeks been running up 13 of those [units] a day just to get through the peaks,” she said.