Construction World December 2023

CONSULTING ENGINEERS

EAST LONDON INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT ZONES I ndustrial Development Zones (IDZs) in South Africa are designated geographic areas with a specific focus on promoting and supporting the growth and development of targeted industries. The primary purpose of IDZs is to attract local and foreign

project and subsequently administrating the project during construction until finally closing it out. The scope of Part B of the project involved the upgrade of 3x 11kV switching stations, strengthing the MV feeder network within the Zone and lastly upgrading the infeed Eskom Substation. This project required detailed and advanced planning solutions to ensure minimal interruption to the current production lines. The Eskom Leaches Bay infeed substation scoping involved upgrading the existing 11kV Board which uses onboard protection. Bigen in collaboration with Wood Beam had re-engineered the protection scheme with newer protection relays to build the 1 st 3CF 4100F Eskom protection scheme for an indoor 11kV Vacuum indoor circuit breaker. Upon completion of Part B of the works, Bigen commenced with the Load Curtailment programme implementation offered by Eskom. Load Curtailment is a term used to describe the process of reducing or shedding electrical load during periods of high demand on the South African power grid. It is a strategy used by Eskom, South Africa's state owned power utility, to prevent blackouts or rolling blackouts during times of electricity supply shortage. The advantage of the programme is that through load shifting, the industries within the ELIDZ only need to shed 20% of the load while still maintaining they ability to continue with manufacturing during load shedding events. This effectively contributes to providing a sustainable operation for the manufacturers within the ELIDZ therefore minimizing the negative impact of our power crisis on our economy. Bigen undertook an investigation to implement the load curtailment system using the conventional

investment, create jobs, and increase the country's competitiveness in the global economy. Overall, IDZs are a critical tool for South Africa's economic development strategy, and they play a vital role in attracting investment and creating employment opportunities in the country. The East London Development Zone(ELIDZ) is home to automotive industry manufacturers and many other industries. In 2015, the upgrade of the Mercedes Benz South Africa Plant was undertaken to cater for the production of the all-new W206 C Class Mercedes Benz. This attracted funding from Daimler AG for an amount of R2b to expand their production line. The effects of this investment followed the need for expansion of the Automotive Supplier Park within the ELIDZ which triggered the need for additional firm power. In 2016, through a successful bidding process, Bigen was appointed to complete the Master planning investigation, implementing the electrical infrastructure upgrade released from the master plan recommendations and lastly implementing a load curtailment & energy efficiency system. The Master plan completed aided the ELIDZ to realize the short medium and long-term infrastructure required and the associated costs to be equipped to meet the manufacturing demand of Mercedes Benz South Africa Plant. The short-term Electrical upgrades led to Bigen commencing with the detailed design of Part B of the

62 22 nd Best Projects Awards 2023