Cape Town - Cape Town mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis has said the municipality is aiming to buy electricity from as many City-supplied customers as possible.
Businesses and, in time, residents, will receive cash for selling their excess power into Cape Town’s grid, he said.
This comes after the National Treasury exempted the City from competitive bidding processes.
The sale of excess power by homes and businesses with small-scale embedded generation (SSEGs), among other generation solutions, is said to contribute to Cape Town’s goal of four-stages load-shedding protection within three years.
Hill-Lewis said: “The future is now, as we aim to immediately roll out the paying of cash for power. Payments to commercial customers will be possible before June, and within the year for any Capetonian with the necessary City-approved generation capacity. If you’re thinking of investing in a solar system, it just got more attractive.
“We aim to buy electricity from as many City-supplied customers as are willing to sell to us.
“These customers may now produce as much power as they can from their approved systems and feed it into Cape Town’s grid.
“Under this plan, we will also pay these customers an incentive over and above the Nersa-approved tariff as they help us turn the corner on load shedding.”
The National Energy Regulator of South Africa (Nersa) has approved a rate of 78.98c/kWh for this financial year for the City to pay power sellers. The City also adds a 25c/kWh incentive tariff on top of this.
Hill-Lewis said the City has steadily been laying the groundwork to enable payment for excess small scale power, including:
• Dropping a policy requirement for power sellers to be “net consumers” of energy, which previously only allowed for municipal bills to be credited for excess power, instead of actual cash payments
• Allocating R15-million budget to pay for energy generated by SSEGs for the remainder of this financial year until June.
SSEG and wheeling customers who want to feed energy into the grid need to have their system approved and have an AMI (advanced metering infrastructure) meter installed by the City.
This is a bi-directional meter that allows accurate reporting of the amounts of energy consumed and generated.
“We know this meter is still too costly for many, and we are working on finding an alternative option of comparable quality and reliability. Customers who want to upgrade their systems to make use of this existing development need to have the upgrade approved by the City.”
Cape Times