RATE IT | Energy crisis: CT wants to buy electricity from you and Joburg is taking traffic lights off the grid

18 July 2022 - 11:00
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Cities across the country have come up with initiatives to keep the lights on. Stock photo.
Cities across the country have come up with initiatives to keep the lights on. Stock photo.
Image: 123RF/Phive 015

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Cape Town and Johannesburg have introduced several initiatives to keep the lights on, including buying surplus energy and taking traffic lights off the grid.

Buy back power

Cape Town mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis recently announced his city intends to encourage big businesses and consumers with excess power to sell some back to the city.

He said those who do so will be given a credit on their municipal bill instead of receiving cash. However, if businesses prefer cash to invest in solar energy, this will be provided.

Speaking to BizNews, Hill-Lewis said: “We want to encourage big businesses in Cape Town which have significant roof space to sell us excess power, so we are offering very significant incentives.

“For the first time, we’ve allowed you to run up a credit against your municipal bill for power you sell to us, but we never send you cash.

“If you want it, we will EFT you cash at the end of the month for the power you sell us. That will help to finance the upfront investment a lot and hopefully gets a good response from the markets. That could help speed up our project.”

Remove traffic lights from grid

Stellenbosch municipality has kept its traffic lights online during load-shedding by installing uninterruptible power supply or uninterruptible power source units.

“All municipal-owned traffic lights in the Stellenbosch municipal area are free from Eskom’s rolling blackouts thanks to the installation of UPS units. We are working on taking over more traffic lights in the municipal area,” it said.

City of Johannesburg mayor Mpho Phalatse said the process of doing the same in her city is under way.

The city’s Johannesburg Road Agency manages about 2,300 signalised intersections, with “almost all the traffic lights supplied from the power grid”. 

Independent power stations

In February, Hill-Lewis said Cape Town opened a first round of bidding for independent entities to tender for providing up to 300MW of energy, most of which will be solar.

According to the City of Johannesburg, 10% of its power is supplied by the Kelvin power station, a private producer with a purchase agreement with the city.  

The SABC reported earlier this year that City Power acting CEO Tshifularo Mashava said it wants independent pr producers to carry more of the power load in the future.

“We are buying 90% from Eskom and it is not serving us well. It is becoming costly and is not reliable. We would like to get power purchase agreements with those able to do it.

“We would prefer sustainable ways in terms of renewables. We are also looking for those with battery storage. We are ready to do business and receive other independent power producers.”

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