Western Cape intends to spend R7 bln to address energy issues

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The Western Cape government aims to set aside R7 billion over the next three years through its Energy Resilience Programme, to mitigate the impact of the ongoing severe power cuts.

The provincial government is also looking to enable private sector stakeholders to form part of the solutions to the power crisis.

It says it is concerned about the steady decline of the Energy Availability Factor which was recorded at just over 50 percent last week and averages at about 52 percent this year compared to 58 percent last year.

Dhesen Moodley, a majority owner of the Klipheuwel Wind Farm built in 2014 near Caledon in the Overberg, says South Africa needs to be innovate and also allow private-public sector partnerships to accelerate investment on the grid.

“We think South Africa needs an accelerated grid investment to take us out of load shedding in the next 10 years. We need to build more wind and solar in the Western Cape, Northern Cape and the Eastern Cape. In order to do that we need to fast track investment on a massive scale. What we suggested to national government, because provincial government doesn’t have the mandate, is to leverage private sector investment and skills to unlock that grid bottleneck.”