South Africa’s Telkom announced today that it has come through a year marred by unparalleled levels of loadshedding and an alarming number of incidents of theft and vandalism targeting network infrastructure.
Despite these challenges, Telkom said its team replaced over 5 000 backup batteries and undertook repair work on over 1 600 sites, which was crucial in restoring services and maintaining network stability.
The partial state-owned entity added that it had spent R655 million on diesel and back-up batteries in the year to end-March 2023 to ease Eskom’s load shedding on its business.
Cumulatively, Telkom said there were 5 585 hours of loadshedding during the year.
It added that a huge spike in loadshedding (2 072 hours) was seen in the last quarter of full year 2023, accounting for 36.6% of overall diesel spend.
In line with its 2035 carbon neutral and 2040 net-zero ambitions, Telkom continued to focus on annual emissions reductions through energy efficiency and renewable energy initiatives.
In April 2022, Telkom commissioned a 168 kWp solar photovoltaic (PV) plant at its Belville site.
Other highlights for the year include:
- Completing the LED lighting installation project for Telkom Park, Bellville and 60 of our exchanges
- Decommissioning of our legacy equipment assisted in reducing our CO2 emissions
- The ongoing installation of lithium batteries as backup power as an alternative to using diesel generators during power outages
Telkom Park’s additional 1 MW solar PV project was deferred to full year 2024 due to a delay in Small Scale Embedded Generation approval.
In addition, Telkom said it had decommissioned some legacy equipment to reduce energy consumption.
“Over the course of this year, we worked towards reducing dependency on non-renewable energy by identifying sustainable and cleaner energy options to complement our current portfolio of energy sources.”
To this end, Openserve proactively deployed smart power backup technology at more than 310 of its sites and is confident of doubling such deployments in full year 2024.
Telkom added that work is underway to leverage smart deployments across Openserve’s sites to introduce remote monitoring of power and environmental equipment.
“We are confident that such initiatives will not only reduce the anticipated increase in diesel usage, but also provide a sustainable energy mix for the future.”
