The City of Cape Town is edging closer to implementing its cash-for-power plan, which will see it sell excess electricity generated by residents and businesses for cash.
This was the word from alderman James Vos, the city’s mayoral committee member for economic growth.
Providing an update on Cape Town’s ongoing renewables initiatives, during the Solar Power Africa Conference 2023, Vos noted the importance of renewable energy – in a country whose energy supply is still very much dominated by coal – cannot be understated.
According to Vos, while the Global South, which includes regions in Africa, Latin America and Southern Asia, contributes far less to global warming than other regions, it suffers the most from its effects.
Over the years, Cape Town has been at the forefront of calling on government to allow it to procure its own energy, in order to wean itself from the embattled Eskom.
As part of this strategy, the city has introduced an initiative to enable the sale of excess power by homes and businesses with small-scale embedded generation, to contribute to Cape Town’s goal of load-shedding protection within three years.
Last month, the city announced National Treasury had exempted it from competitive bidding processes not designed for the coming energy revolution.
The move would allow the mother city to introduce the cash-for-power plan, which will see it buy excess electricity generated by businesses and residents for cash.
The move came after president Cyril Ramaphosa announced earlier this year that households and businesses will soon be allowed to sell surplus electricity from rooftop solar panels into the national grid.
“The city will be soon pay cash for power, which is fed into the local electricity grid. Businesses, and in time residents, will also receive cash for selling their excess power into Cape Town’s grid,” explained Vos.
The city previously said the system will go live, first with businesses, before June, and one year later, residents would also be able to cash in on their unused renewable power.
The trend has taken countries like the US and Germany by storm, with experts warning that if it’s not implemented correctly, it could result in wasted energy and overburdened systems.
According to Vos, the clean energy opportunities in Africa are vast – and yet largely untapped.
Quoting the International Energy Agency, he pointed out Africa is home to 60% of the world’s best solar resources, yet it hosts only 1% of the global installed solar photovoltaic (PV) capacity.
“And that right there should indicate the potential of the solar PV market. If we want to create a cleaner, more economically sustainable and energy secure future for our children – in fact, for ourselves right now – we need the knowledge and skills resources to fully take advantage of that big, shiny fireball in the sky.”
Unpacking other initiatives, he detailed a tender for the engineering, procurement and construction of a 7MW solar power plant in Atlantis.
“The plant is scheduled to start generating electricity in 2024, and be in operation for 20 years, with a foreseen annual output of 14.7GWh. It is expected to result in a R47.2 million gross domestic product increase. More such plants are planned across the metro.”
Meanwhile, a 200MW procurement of renewable energy was concluded last year and tenders will be awarded in the coming months, with the procurement now in the evaluation phase of technical proposals received from independent power producers.
“We also issued a tender for third-party aggregators who will reward so-called ‘power heroes’ for reducing their electricity usage. This will help to keep more supply on the grid, giving further load-shedding protection to city-supplied customers,” Vos concluded.
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