Public universities are expected to ask the government on Monday to exempt them from Eskom’s load-shedding, which has gripped the country in the past few weeks.
The national outages have undermined the smooth running of university administrations, disrupted lectures and placed millions of rands’ worth of research at risk.
Higher Education South Africa, the organisation representing public universities, convened a meeting on Monday with executive directors and deputy vice-chancellors responsible for the management of facilities to discuss the implications of the electricity crisis on the sector.
“At a time when the country is already faced with an education crisis, learning and teaching are directly affected,” said Professor Antonie de Klerk, executive director of the University of Pretoria (UP) and chairperson of the coming meeting. “Perhaps education is important enough to exempt us,” he said.
De Klerk said if the government cannot help institutions in this way, they are hoping for financial assistance to acquire back-up sources of power, such as generators.
Stellenbosch University, for example, has invested R18,5-million in emergency generators for its four campuses — the main campus in Stellenbosch, the faculty of health sciences in Tygerberg, the Business School in Bellville and the faculty of military science in Saldanah. This measure was taken in 2006 when the power crisis first hit the Western Cape.
Subsequently, additional funds were spent on back-up support such as emergency lighting. Diesel and refuelling costs for generators amount to about R6 000 per outage hour, while ongoing maintenance costs are about R500 000 a year.
Mohamed Shaikh, senior director of communication at Stellenbosch University, said these measures have limited the risks of outages to research and teaching.
“Before the installation of emergency power generators in 2006, a conservative estimate put the value of research that was at risk as a direct result of the outages between R200-million and R250-million. In some departments, which do not have emergency backup power, outages do adversely affect the completion of research papers, interrupting computational processes and the resetting of experiments. The fluctuation in power supply also puts electronic equipment such as computers at risk,” said Shaikh.
The University of the Free State is one of many institutions still compiling plans to deal with the outages.
Spokesperson Mangaleso Radebe said the university is investigating the acquisition of generators for selected venues as it could not afford to provide emergency power generation for the entire campus.
“There are about 13 backup systems in place at the university. Examples of buildings and faculties are the medical faculty, microbiology building and chemistry building, which safeguard research and experiments,” said Radebe.
De Klerk said UP, which has six campuses, needed 32MW of power, which equals the electricity generated by a small power station. The university has 4MW emergency capacity for lights and special equipment, which is inadequate.
The lack of electricity meant the interruption of lectures. “We cannot reschedule lectures because the timetable and facilities don’t allow it,” he said. Lecturers were asked to finish their teaching in 12 weeks instead of the scheduled 14. It has introduced a range of energy savings interventions.
De Klerk said institutions are prepared to help the government, through research, to find solutions to the crisis.