Cape Town Metro Leading the way
Dealing with Load shedding
Efforts by the City of Cape Town to become the first load shedding free metro are gaining traction. It has now obtained the legal rights to buy electricity back from private suppliers.
Cape Town Mayor, Geordin Hill-Lewis, has announced the City can now pay cash for power fed into the local electricity grid.
“Payments to commercial customers will be possible before June, and within the year for any Capetonian with the necessary City-approved generation capacity.”
“These customers may now produce as much power as they can from their approved systems and feed it into Cape Town’s grid,” Hill-Lewis said.
These rights were attained after the National Treasury exempted the city from competitive bidding processes which hinder the coming energy revolution.
In other metros, policies require power sellers to be ‘net consumers’ of energy and municipal bills to be credited for excess power, instead of actual cash payment. Therefore systems are often set up to only produce the power needed by the user. Nevertheless, we are hoping that soon other metros will look at implementing the same model as Cape Town.
Advanced Metering Infrastructure
SSEG and private customers wanting to feed energy into the grid need to have their system approved which includes having an AMI (Advanced Metering Infrastructure) meter installed by the City.
The AMI meter is a bi-directional meter that allows accurate reporting of the amounts of energy consumed and generated. With this, they can feed all extra power back into the grid and get paid for it.
The AMI meter available at present is costly, but the City of Cape Town has said it is actively looking at cheaper alternatives.
As the network of home power producers grows, so will the city’s energy security. This has the potential to be a powerful piece of the solution to end load-shedding over time, together with the Independent Power Procurement programme.
Genergy Projects
Genergy is presently working on a number of sites ranging from 1-10MW as well as smaller residential projects.
We at Genergy have always believed that Renewables would play an important role in the electricity production mix in South Africa.
Working towards a sustainable future!
Greening tips:
Switching to energy-saving lightbulbs not only helps the environment – it helps your wallet, too! They last up to 10
times longer than regular lightbulbs and use around
80% less energy.
A message from our health & safety officer
Fact #1: Safety signs that inform your employees of danger or potential danger can reduce workplace accidents by
up to 80% “This means that by merely placing relevant, instructional safety signs all over your workplace, you can cut incidents down to almost nothing. Ensure employees are on the lookout for the relevant safety signs around the office, factory and warehouse etc. it might just save them from injury.”
