The Executive Mayor of Tshwane Metro, Cilliers Brink says the City is considering a private partnership to enhance the functioning of the Rooiwal and Pretoria West Power Stations. This will assist the city to generate at least a 1000 Mega Watts of electricity independent of Eskom in the next three years.
The Tshwane Council recently approved a public participation report for the proposed 40-year lease of the Rooiwal and Pretoria West Power Stations.
Brink says the City’s energy master plan seeks to reduce Tshwane’s dependence on Eskom and alleviate the burden of load-shedding that is worsened by constant vandalism of the power infrastructure.
During a brief visit to the Rooiwal Power Station, north of the city, Brink outlines the City’s energy master plan.
“Earlier this year, we appointed an energy task team people from across the various units in the city of Tshwane. To look at the critical issues of how we can become more independent of Eskom. Basically, they are looking at generating and procuring at least a thousand Mega Watts of electricity in the next three years. The City of Tshwane uses about 2600 Mega Watts. So that will have a significant impact on our energy independence from Eskom. We obviously also have to look at the configuration of our network,” says Brink.
In recent times, the City and the power utility have had a strained relationship due to the city’s un-serviced electricity caused by the city’s lack of liquidity.
“The objective would be to generate a thousand megawatts of electricity independent of Eskom. We don’t know how Eskom’s generating capacity is going to deteriorate in the next year, in the next three- years but we’re assuming it will be at least stable but declining. So, yes of course we would want to save stages of load shedding by whatever means possible and that’s what we have to do for communities,” Brink added.
