Civil Engineering October 2021 | Vol 29 No 9

T he new plant was handed over on 4 October 2021 at an official ceremony that was attended by senior officials from the Department of Higher Education, Science and Innovation, along with representatives of the University of Pretoria (UP), the Water Research Commission (WRC), Mhlontlo Local Municipality and the Kwa-Madiba community. “The Kwa-Madiba scheme borrows a small proportion of water flowing over the Thina River Falls by diverting it into a steep and narrow tunnel. This precious resource is then returned to the main river after its power has been harnessed to spin a turbine,” explains Marco van Dijk, a lecturer in UP’s Department of Civil Engineering and prin- cipal researcher for several WRC projects. At Kwa-Madiba, a 450 mm diam- eter tunnel was drilled through the surrounding rock close to the Thina Falls to provide a penstock. According to Van Dijk, the project will have minimal to no impact on the river environment because only small amounts of river water will be rerouted through the turbine before being returned to the river almost instantly. Such run-of-river schemes are also unlike large-scale hydro-electric dams that can inundate large areas of fertile land, disrupt fish migration and create other environmental disturbance. The Kwa-Madiba project, which has involved UP, the WRC and the national Department of Science and Innovation, also created very little visual impact on the scenic value of the Thina Falls, because much of the piping infrastructure is underground, while the turbine is housed in a small, 6 m long shipping container. Importantly, Van Dijk says the project team was able to participate in the public consultation process of the General Authorisation (GA) scheme in terms of the National Water Act (1998). This means that the revised GA system now allows for the construction of small-scale run-of-river hydropower projects without the need for a full-scale Water Use Licence process – provided that these schemes do not exceed 300 kW and adhere to specific require- ments. This is important as the Water Use Licence process can be lengthy and costly, and can act as a disincentive to the rollout of similar cost-effective hydro projects. “South Africa is a dry country com- pared to the rest of the world, but there is no reason why the country’s water resources cannot be tapped to deliver green electricity to many isolated rural communities,” Van Dijk explained. Leading the way to green hydropower for remote communities An innovative small-scale hydropower plant has been built to generate 50 kW of electricity for the remote rural village of Kwa-Madiba in the Mhlontlo Local Municipality, north-east of Mthatha in the Eastern Cape. 28 October 2021  Civil Engineering Thina Falls, the site of a new small-scale hydropower plant, where the turbine plant is housed in the grey shipping container