Dumped — metros start the move away from Eskom and towards independent power producers

As rolling blackouts persist with no respite in sight, cities including Johannesburg, Cape Town and Nelson Mandela Bay are trying to mitigate the impact on residents and protect critical infrastructure while proceeding with plans to eventually ditch Eskom.

Stage 6 load shedding was implemented on 11 January. The power utility said on Monday that power cuts would be reduced to stages 4 and 5 from Tuesday.

The power outages are causing havoc across the country, and leading metros know that if there is to be any hope for the future, they will have to cut Eskom adrift and make increasing use of independent power producers.

Johannesburg

The collapse of electricity infrastructure in Johannesburg, which is buckling under the weight of high levels of rolling blackouts, is taking a toll on the city’s residents.

Power cuts are impacting on Joburg’s water supply and sewer pump stations, and on Monday the city, along with other municipalities around the country, urged residents to use water sparingly as temperatures soared and demand increased.

City Power said on Thursday that it is unable to keep up with the growing demand for mini-substations due to the higher stages of load shedding. By Wednesday this week, City Power needed at least 14 mini-substation boxes to deal with outages in different areas.

“Since the recent higher stages of load shedding, City Power has been losing mini-substations faster than we can replenish them,” it said.

Mayor of Johannesburg Mpho Phalatse. (Photo: Gallo Images / Luba Lesolle)

On 23 May last year, the City of Joburg held its first Energy Indaba where executive mayor Mpho Phalatse announced plans to cut ties with Eskom by urgently bringing independent power onto the grid.

Read more in Daily Maverick: “ ‘Give me 18 to 36 months’, says Joburg mayor Mpho Phalatse to residents buckling under endless blackouts”

The indaba aimed to engage with businesses and the government to find a way to reduce the city’s 90% energy reliance on Eskom — positioning itself to become more energy independent — and to find a permanent solution to rolling blackouts. The remaining 10% of Joburg’s power comes from the privately owned Kelvin Power Station.

At the indaba, Phalatse indicated that City Power would go out to the market for requests for proposals (RFPs) within the next three months and that a tender process would follow that.

“Once this is done, we can expect to see projects go online in a phased approach over 18 to 36 months,” Daily Maverick’s Ferial Haffajee reported mayor Phalatse as saying in closing the event.

It was only in November 2022 that City Power went out to the market for RFPs to secure excess energy from alternative sources through short-term agreements of up to 36 months.

The deadline for the RFPs is 10 February 2023.

Parallel to the short-term power purchase agreement, Phalatse’s spokesperson Mabine Seabe told Daily Maverick that the city is also undergoing an approval process for ministerial determination to procure power on a longer-term basis from independent power producers (IPPs).

“There are no quick fixes to the emergency that the city and country face,” said Seabe.

“From the Energy Indaba, we set a timeline of 18 to 36 months to get the first IPPs feeding energy into the city’s network. There are a number of regulatory hurdles that we must navigate, as we require concurrence from National Treasury, who we have worked closely with on finalising the specifications for the short-term power purchase agreements, and we will continue working with them as we walk the path toward reducing our reliance on Eskom.”

Seabe said the city’s “ultimate goal is to procure an additional 500MW of reliable, sustainable and affordable energy”.

If Joburg purchases 500MW of independent power, it would reduce Eskom’s stranglehold and the city could be able to avoid rolling blackouts up to Stage 5, according to Seabe.

City Power is also looking at programmes that would potentially “bank” 300MW or avert up to Stage 3 blackouts, said Seabe.

“Work is being done to test the viability of these interventions,” he added.

Read more in Daily Maverick: “Out in the cold — power crisis forces enterprising ice cream shops to brink of closure”

Cape Town 

As is the case in other municipalities around the country, load shedding has impacted Cape Town’s sewage pump stations, which the city says is to blame for the sewage spills and subsequent closure of several beaches in the metropole.

Cape Town mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis. (Photo: Leila Dougan)

Addressing Cape Town’s ongoing sewage spills was a top priority for mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis upon his election in November 2021. But, as GroundUp’s Steve Kretzmann reported, the city still has numerous sewage pollution issues

Read more in Daily Maverick: “Some beachgoers undeterred by health warnings as Cape Town blames rolling blackouts for sewage spills”

The City of Cape Town said on Wednesday that it is planning to increase its water and sanitation budget seven-fold over the next three years, in a bid to upgrade its pump stations and bolster protection from load shedding.

The budget will increase from R70-million in 2022 to R400-million in 2024, and R500-million in 2025, it said in a statement.

“While we aim to end load shedding over time in Cape Town, we are investing now to protect our critical infrastructure from the impact of sustained blackouts,” said Hill-Lewis.

“Cape Town’s sewer infrastructure is under pressure from rapid urbanisation and is in need of upgrading… Now, thanks to an ongoing city-wide audit of the state of sewer pump stations, we are ready to massively ramp up budgets for upgrades.

“This includes protection from load shedding, sewer misuse, theft and vandalism.”

The City of Cape Town is “working as fast as possible” to reduce its reliance on Eskom and procure more affordable power on the open market, Hill-Lewis told Daily Maverick on Wednesday.

Cape Town has, until recently, managed to provide its customers with up to two stages of load shedding relief where possible, thanks to the use of a hydroelectric plant at the Steenbras Dam. This is why Capetonians, at times, have only faced Stage 4 blackouts while the rest of the country dealt with Stage 6.

However, in a move to eventually break free from Eskom, Cape Town aims to provide at least four stages of load shedding protection progressively over the next three years, said Hill-Lewis.

This is set to be achieved through various means, including:

• Buying power on the open market;


• Paying businesses and residents to sell power back to the city and incentives for voluntary energy savings under a new Power Heroes programme; and


• Municipal generation projects such as the Steenbras hydroelectric scheme, solar panels and gas turbines.

The first phase of procuring power from IPPs got under way in the first quarter of 2022, when the City of Cape Town issued tenders to independent producers to source additional power.

Speaking at the Solar Power Africa conference in February last year, Hill-Lewis said the city will procure up to 300MW of renewable energy “over the coming months”.

Daily Maverick understands that this 300MW is yet to be procured as the process is still under way.

According to the city, there are currently three phases in the procurement process:

• IPP round one — 200MW (submissions received end of June 2022 — currently in evaluation phase);


• Dispatchable energy tender — 300MW (likely to open in February 2023); and


• IPP round two (date and MW to be determined).

The next phase of IPP procurement, Hill-Lewis told Daily Maverick on Wednesday, is set to open sometime in February, and will also include battery storage alongside generation.

“Between the first two phases of IPP procurement, the city aims to add about 500MW of independent power to its grid,” he said.

A single load shedding stage requires the city to shut down up to 60MW of power, so the city believes 500MW will offer “significant relief”.

Nelson Mandela Bay

Taking heed of other major cities’ plans to break away from Eskom, Nelson Mandela Bay (NMB) metro energy boss, Luvuyo Magalela, told Daily Maverick that its plan is to decarbonise and diversify electricity supply to the metro.

“In 2021/22, NMB introduced wheeling tariffs and net billing tariffs to promote renewables in the city, and, most importantly, build an energy portfolio that will enable it to be independent from Eskom,” said Magalela.

In the first quarter of 2023, NMB will be going out on tender to buy up to 180MW of renewable energy from IPPs within the city, according to Magalela. He said that NMB is also in the process of signing an agreement with a power producer to bank unused energy within the city.

In the meantime, Magalela said NMB is making efforts to ease the burden of rolling blackouts on businesses, and is currently “piloting a 24-hour load curtailing to 20 industries within the metro. Should the pilot be successful, it will be extended to other industrial customers.”

• Daily Maverick sent questions to eThekwini metro, but had not received a response by the time of publication. DM