Cape Town - Municipalities across the Western Cape are pulling out all the stops to reduce energy consumption from Eskom while cutting down on electricity costs and increasing sustainability.
Currently 21 out of 24 municipalities allow small-scale renewable energy on the grid, and 20 have feed-in tariffs that allow households and businesses to be compensated for feeding excess energy back into the network.
George portfolio member for electro technical services Nosicelo Mbete (DA) said the 300 kilowatt peak solar plant at the Civic Centre parking lot was the first solar project to be completed and was commissioned last September.
Mbete said: “The energy produced from the system supplies the Civic building and the excess flows into the grid and supplies neighbouring houses.”
She said the plant produces on average 41500 kilowatt hours (kWh) of energy a month, totalling an average of 500000 kWh of energy per year.
“The payback period is in the order of seven years, and the plant has an estimated operational lifetime of 25 years. The total savings in carbon dioxide emissions would be in the region of 9027 tons of CO2 over the plant’s lifetime,” Mbete said.
Drakenstein Municipality, which covers Paarl, Wellington, Mbekweni, Gouda, Saron, Hermon and Simondium, is exploring a number of avenues to purchase alternative energy from suppliers.
Mayor Conrad Poole said that working together with the province, the municipality was investigating an affordable combination of renewable energy resources such as solar and wind power and options like using gas instead of electricity.
George mayor Leon van Wyk said the council had already approved a renewable energy policy that facilitated the municipality’s commitment to a resilient, integrated municipal energy system. Their immediate priority was the electricity sector where renewable technologies at different scales can be deployed on-site, or electricity wheeled across the grid and aggregated to offer a range of immediate options to all customers over time.
Cape Town mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis and energy Mayco member Beverley van Reenen have recently made announcements about the City’s rapid pace in seeking clean and green power from Independent Power Producers (IPPs).
The City has said it is developing a space for its electricity clients, who are both commercial and residential, to become net producers of electricity.