Cape Town’s big push to beat load shedding kicks off this month
Cape Town mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis says 15 commercial electricity suppliers will start wheeling electricity in June, using the city’s grid infrastructure after getting council approval.
The city’s Mayoral Committee greenlit the authorisation for third parties to start selling electricity via Cape Town’s grid infrastructure.
The city said that electricity wheeling was cited as one of the best ways to deal with the nation’s energy crisis, and a full-scale wheeling program will be launched at the end of the year.
“Wheeling allows people to buy electricity from each other using existing grid infrastructure. The future is now, as Cape Town gears up for the first electron to be wheeled between our pilot project participants this July. This is the business end of our pilot, following the development of the billing engine and the completion of wheeling agreements,” said Hill-Lewis.
“Cape Town’s electricity landscape is rapidly liberalising off the back of our end load-shedding plans, with 700MW of independent power under procurement, innovative Cash for Power and Power Heroes programmes, and now the sale of electricity wheeled between market participants.”
“The city is getting on top of the complexity of wheeling, which requires new skills, regulatory and policy changes, billing development and bilateral agreements. Our programme will allow electricity to be wheeled over both the municipal and Eskom distribution networks in Cape Town,” Beverley van Reenen, Mayoral Committee Member for Energy, added.
“Sales will be governed by bilateral power purchase agreements within a market environment, as opposed to a regulated environment, as the price of the energy is set between the parties and not by the City, Eskom or the National Energy Regulator of South Africa (NERSA)”
The city said that it already has a legislative framework for wheeling, with the Electricity Supply By-Law allowing for the retail wheeling of electricity via its grid network. Wheeling is set to take place on 11kV and higher voltage lines.
Last year, the city invited applications for wheeling, with 15 participants (representing 25 generators and 40 customers) now taking part:
- Amazon Data Service South Africa (Pty) Ltd
- Brinmar Private Energy Trading South Africa
- Distributed Power Africa (Pty) Ltd
- Energy Exchange of Southern Africa (Pty) Ltd
- Energy Partners Utilities (RF) (Pty) Ltd
- EnerJ Carbon Management
- Enpower Trading (Pty) Ltd
- Floating Solar (Pty) Ltd
- Make a Difference Ventures GP LLC
- NEURA Trading (Pty)
- Phofu Solar Plant (RF) (Pty)
- POWERX Proprietary Limited
- Redefine Properties Limited
- Solar Africa Energy (Pty)
- Swish Property Seven (Pty)
Read: Electricity minister has a different kind of power problem
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