The City of Cape Town opened electricity grid to energy traders after the conclusion of a successful year-long electricity ‘wheeling’ pilot project, to private electricity sales and trading.
Reportedly, the wheeling allows participants to buy electricity directly from Independent Power Producers or licensed energy traders using existing municipal grid infrastructure. More than 562,800 kWhs of power has already been generated and wheeled across the grid of the City of Cape Town between private sector energy traders during the pilot phase.
Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis of City of Cape Town said that they officially signal the full opening of Cape Town’s wheeling regime after a successful year-long pilot. In next phase, the city Cape Town will promote the scaling up of power trading across the electricity grid between qualifying private sellers, based on bilateral and multi-lateral trading agreements.
According to Lewis, it is an exciting leap forward to diversify the electricity supplier-base beyond Eskom to a future of decentralised electricity trading in South Africa. Over 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.
Considerably, Enpower Trading, Etana Energy and Equites Fund Property have been the trailblazers in the pilot programme and will continue to be as valuable partners.
Mayor Lewis stated that this is the start of a changing role for municipalities in the energy space. He added, “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 greatest efforts in order to change the energy regime,” stated Geordin Hill-Lewis.
Notably, wheeling pilot phase of Cape Town includes three wheeling participants, that are:
- Trader – who trades the generated energy over the City’s grid
- Generator – the generator of the wheeled energy
- Off-taker – the receiver of the wheeled energy
There are three different teams who have participated in this project and they are:
- Trader: Enpower Trading
Generator: FairBridge Mall, Barckenfell
Off-taker: Shoprite Head Office, Brackenfell - Trader: Etana Energy
Generator: Constantia Shopping Mall
Off-taker: Growthpoint Properties, City Centre - Trader: Equites Property Fund Limited
Generator: Equites Property Fund Limited, Parow Industria
Off-taker: APF Portside, City Centre