Water is drawn from behind a dam on the Mbhashe River and diverted through a penstock to the Colley Wobbles Power Station.

[1] The Mbhashe River rises in the mountains of the southern Drakensberg, and flows eastward across an undulating grassland coastal plateau until shortly after passing under national road N2, the river encounters southwest of Elliotdale and north-east of Dutywa the more rugged terrain of the Wild Coast and suddenly enters into a 64 km long series of violent twists and turns known as the Collywobbles before continuing more sedately to discharge into the Indian Ocean.

The power stations were initially owned and operated by the Transkei Electricity Supply Corporation (TESCOR), until in April 1995 all four of them were transferred to Eskom.

Due to the design of the draft tubes and tailrace the generating units do not have the ability to provide voltage support by operating as a synchronous condenser (SCO mode).

The Mbhashe provides a flow of approximately two cumecs which gave the power station an effective storage of 2.5 GWh, which is equivalent to 60 hours of operation with all three turbines generating at maximum capacity.

[3] The soils in the Mbhashe catchment are naturally prone to erosion, which has been exacerbated by overgrazing, When it was commissioned in 1984 the lake behind the dam had a design storage of nine million cubic metres.

[7] As well as reducing the storage capacity the silt particles entering the tunnel and passing through increase wear and tear on the turbines.