- After the conclusion of a successful year-long electricity ‘wheeling’ pilot project, the City of Cape Town is opening its electricity grid to private electricity sales and trading.
- Wheeling allows participants to buy electricity directly from Independent Power Producers or licenced energy traders using existing municipal grid infrastructure.
- Over 562 800 kWhs of power has already been generated and wheeled across the City’s grid between private sector energy traders during the pilot phase.
‘Today we officially signal the full opening of Cape Town’s wheeling regime after a successful year-long pilot. In this next phase, the City will promote the scaling up of power trading across our electricity grid between qualifying private sellers, based on bilateral and multi-lateral trading agreements.
Mayor Geordin Hill Lewis with the energy trader representatives. Image credit: City of Cape Town
‘This is an exciting leap forward to diversify our electricity supplier-base beyond Eskom to a future of decentralised electricity trading in South Africa. More than half a million kilowatt hours have already been wheeled across Cape Town’s grid during the pilot phase between three energy companies generating power from a number of sources.
‘Enpower Trading, Etana Energy and Equites Fund Property have been our trailblazers in the pilot programme and will continue to be valuable partners. This is the start of a changing role for municipalities in the energy space. If we consider what has been generated just in the pilot, when we scale it up, the numbers get absolutely huge so it is important that we get it right. Thank you to our City teams and private partners who have shown again that Cape Town is leading the efforts to change the energy regime,’ said Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis.
Author: Bryan Groenendaal
