Cape Town - Cape Town has made “great progress” with its three-phase procurement for load shedding protection and is on track to be load shedding free with its plan to tender for 500MW from independent power producers beginning in February.
Unveiling the details of the City’s three-phase procurement programme to generate power locally, mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis said: “Two major tenders have already closed, and are in assessment phase; the third and biggest one will be issued in a matter of weeks.”
Addressing the city council on Thursday on the progress of the City’s plan to shield residents from the first four stages of rolling blackouts, Hill-Lewis said the plan was to provide protection from the first four stages of Eskom’s load shedding within three years.
“Tenders are to be awarded in the coming months, with the procurement now in the evaluation phase of technical proposals received from IPPs.”
Meanwhile, the City is working with the Centre for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) on grid integration studies to determine when and where these IPPs will feed power into Cape Town’s grid.
Hill-Lewis said the second of the three-phase procurement for load shedding protection takes the form of our “Power Heroes” programme.
This is an initiative based on paying residents incentives for voluntary energy savings, which will entail automated remote switching off of power-intensive devices at peak times.
Hill-Lewis said the demand response tender for this programme, launched in October last year, was currently in the evaluation phase, and would also be awarded within the coming months, said Hill-Lewis.
The third phase of procurement will be launched next month and will take the form of a Dispatchable Energy tender, expected to yield around 500MW for the city’s grid.
Reacting to the mayor’s speech, Stop CoCT lobby group founder Sandra Dickson said while they welcomed the City seeking an independent power supply from IPPs, they wanted to know whether the promised end to hyper-inflationary increases in the price of power would be visible in the 2023/24 budget.
“In the January adjustment budget the City is allocating an extra R20 million to maintenance of Steenbras and an additional R17 million for fuel to generators.
“It is clear that reducing load shedding by the City is coming along with additional costs.”
As the mayor was making his announcement, Eskom announced it had launched the tender for the second phase of its land lease parcels for IPP renewable energy producers.
Eskom spokesperson Sikonathi Mantshantsha said the land lease programme was launched in April 2022.
Through this programme, Eskom makes available some of its land to IPPs for the purposes of creating new electricity generating capacity.
These land parcels are in close proximity to network connection points, reducing the time required to build new grid connection infrastructure.
“Rather than buying the electricity from the IPPs, Eskom facilitates a process for the IPPs to be able to wheel the power over the Eskom grid, either for their own consumption, or to sell on to other consumers.”
Mantshantsha said this was to enable Eskom’s desire to work with the private sector to enable new capacity in line with the anticipated future, deregulated electricity industry.
mwangi.githahu@inl.co.za