Cape Town forging ahead with energy procurement from Independent Power Producers

The City of Cape Town says it’s going ahead with the procurement of further energy supply from Independent Power Producers (IPPs) as Eskom reintroduces stage two blackouts.

Cape Town Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis has expressed the urgent need for more energy supply as Eskom resumes rolling blackouts.

In a statement, Hill-Lewis says: “It has become clear to the City of Cape Town that if we wish to halt the damage caused by Eskom’s monopoly over electricity generation, we have to take matters into our own hands. The only way for us to provide reliable and affordable electricity to our residents is to source it from elsewhere.”

The Cape Town mayor also highlighted implications of the rolling blackouts.

“It should never be forgotten that any load shedding comes at a significant cost for South Africans.”

“Load shedding means real businesses failing. Load-shedding means jobs being lost. Load-shedding makes the possibility of meaningful economic recovery ever more remote,” he adds.

Reducing rolling blackouts

Stage 2 blackouts were implemented yesterday and will continue until Monday.

Eskom CEO Andre de Ruyter says there is currently a power shortage of nearly 14 000 megawatts due to unplanned maintenance.

He says the power utility is working towards reducing the extent of rolling blackouts across the country.

“We have significantly depleted our reserves of both diesel and water in our pump storage facilities which act as a buffer that protects us against a total system blackout. We obviously regret this, and we are working hard to bring units back as quickly as possible and we are, I think, hoping to reduce the extent of load shedding as much as we can but in this instance, unfortunately, we had no alternative but to implement this decision.”

Rolling blackouts in effect until Monday: