First National Bank (FNB) is to spend R50-million on standby generators and uninterrupted power supply (UPS) units at its branches nationwide in response to power failures, it said on Friday.
FNB said about R15,5-million [of the total amount] had already gone towards generators at 63 branches.
An additional 32 would be installed from March at a cost of about R8-million, putting FNB’s total investment in generators at R24-million by June this year.
Generators have an average power supply of 220 kilowatts each, and would be able to keep a full-service branch running, including air-conditioning, computers, servers, routers and ATMs which consume huge chunks of power, FNB said.
FNB’s head of banking infrastructure Kabelo Monchusi said the generators and UPS systems — which restore power in the event of failure in the branch — were being installed in urban and rural areas, with big branches like Mthatha in the Eastern Cape having two machines.
”The generators are being installed in a way that reduces their noise levels so as not to disturb the neighbourhood and manage the environment. All the generators are well maintained to ensure continuous operation,” says Monchusi.
”In some branches we are not in a position to install generators due to space constrains of housing these huge structures,” he said.
The bank would install additional UPS units at 270 branches at a cost of R13,5-million by June. About 219 FNB branches were already UPS-enabled at a cost of R11-million.
While a stand-by generator switches on a few seconds after a power failure, a UPS system kicks in immediately.
The province with the highest number of standby generators was the Western Cape as this was where most power failures occurred.
”With these generators running, we are able to keep branches functioning during normal banking hours, as well as ATMs that are inside those branches,” said Francois Pienaar, FNB chairperson in the Western Cape.
He said the bank was monitoring the power failures closely and diverting customers to generator-powered branches and to those that had not been affected. – Sapa