- Yesterday, South Africa’s Deputy Minister for Electricity & Energy, Samantha Graham-Maré, met with the leadership of the Dr Beyers Naude Local Municipality (DBNLM) in the Eastern Cape, to discuss progress of the municipality’s innovative electricity programme.
- Dr Beyers Naudé Municipality is a local municipality within the Sarah Baartman District Municipality, in the Eastern Cape of South Africa.
- The programme has the goal of providing affordable electricity to residents while securing revenue so that the municipality can pay off its Eskom debt and keep up to date with monthly current Eskom payments.
To date the municipality has been able to achieve all of these goals. The programme, developed and implemented by the municipality’s appointed service provider, Utility Consulting Solutions, involves an innovative application of current legal electricity trading mechanisms and small-scale embedded generation together with local private partners. By working with local businesses, the municipality has been able to leverage the electricity generated from alternative supplies, without burdening the municipality’s balance sheet. These alternative supplies are currently from rooftop solar and battery storage, and are able to provide dispatchable power during peak demand periods.
Many municipalities are afraid of decreasing revenue from electricity sales as residents and businesses move to rooftop solar, usually in the face of massive tariff increases. This leaves both municipalities and Eskom worse off, as municipal debt to Eskom rises.
Through this programme, DBNLM will be able to keep any increases, even those approved by Nersa, to a maximum of annual CPI + 1%. The municipality will procure the same number of units from Eskom, while maintaining a healthy stream of income.
The Mayor of DBNLM, Cllr Willem Safers, thanked the partners and service provider at the meeting for collaborating on the partnership that has helped to turn around the municipality’s future, and added “From July 2025 we will realise a 40% savings for residents on electricity tariffs, while still buying the same amount of electricity from Eskom, and balancing our books – it’s a win-win for everyone! We are the first municipality to pay our partners cash every month for the electricity that they generate, and will aim to bring 12 000 households into the programme as co-generators of electricity.”
Deputy Minister Graham-Maré confirmed that the Ministry of Electricity and Energy will be working together with the South African National Energy Development Institute (Sanedi), Salga, Cogta, and National Treasury to develop a programme that can be rolled out in 2025 to other municipalities across all provinces.
Author: Bryan Groenendaal
1 Comment
I would like to know the make and model of the bi- direction meters that they will use. The cist of these meters prevents many small installations from changing from consumers to producers.
Regards