Cape Town Mayor Dan Plato has welcomed amendments to electricity regulations, which will enable municipalities to develop their own power generation projects.
Recently Energy Minister Gwede Mantashe announced that the government had put various interventions in place to relieve Eskom of energy supply pressure.
Plato says, “We are cautiously optimistic about the new regulations potentially fast tracking the development of new generation capacity at a local level for the future. The gazetting of the regulations marks another step closer towards a role municipalities can play in the diversification of energy supply.”
Speaking in the National Assembly during an Economic Cluster oral reply session Mantashe says the department has allowed municipalities to purchase their own electricity from their sources and encouraged self-generation to take the pressure out of the power grid.
He said, “One of those is self-generation for own use. We are driving that energetically so that we take away pressure from the grid. Now 2, we have allowed municipalities to purchase their own electricity from sources of their own choice. Thirdly, you would have noticed that over the last weekend, we issued the request for proposals for the emergency purchases of electricity which is the 2000 MW emergency purchase, so all those interventions are directed at taking a lot of pressure from the Eskom grid and allow society and the economy to continue generating electricity and accessing electricity.”
Government issues request for proposals to procure emergency power
Government has issued a request for proposals to procure 2000 megawatts of emergency power.
The move is aimed at relieving a severe energy shortage as embattled Eskom struggles to keep the lights on due to among others its aging and poorly maintained infrastructure.
In December, government issued a request for information (RFI) to source up to 3000 megawatts (MW) of generation capacity.
In the video below, Eskom said last month, the renewable energy on the electricity grid is helping Eskom to keep the lights on.
