The City of Cape Town has opened up its biggest purchase tender for 500 megawatts of dispatchable energy.
Executive Director of Energy, Kadri Nassiep says that the project is one of the main drivers to rid the metro of load shedding.
Dispatchable energy means the power must be available consistently as and when needed.
Bidders must be independent power producers with generation plants that have dispatchable technologies which may include gas-to-power and battery storage.
Nassiep says successful bidders will enter into a 10-year Power Purchase Agreement with the city.
“Why it’s so important for the city is because that power can be used for load shedding mitigations. And we have a stated goal of reducing load shedding by up to four stages over the next 36 months so it’s quite an aggressive target. I do think that we can actually afford to be more ambitious and I think given what we’ve been able to achieve thus far, I think we will certainly be looking at going the extra yard in terms of mitigation.”
