Cape Town plans mammoth R4bn in electricity grid upgrades

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29-04-2024
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The City of Cape Town plans to invest more than R4bn in electricity grid upgrades and maintenance over three years as part of  the City’s proposed Building for Jobs Budget for 2024/25. This is to ensure the grid can cope with a dynamic, decentralised energy future as Cape Town aims to be South Africa’s first city to end load-shedding.

‘Any city hoping to end load-shedding simply must invest heavily in upgrading its electricity grid infrastructure. In the coming years, we will go from an Eskom monopoly to literally thousands of different power sellers, big and small, including people selling their excess solar to the City, commercial entities selling and wheeling electricity to each other, as well as big independent power producers feeding electricity into the grid at various points.

‘With these investments, we are ensuring that Cape Town’s grid infrastructure can cope with a dynamic new energy future, which will drive economic growth and job creation in our city.

‘Our R4bn grid investment comes against the background of high levels of vandalism, theft and load-shedding damage. In response we aim to make our infrastructure more resilient, and to reduce the scope for vandalism over time.

‘Progress is also being made on our advanced plans to protect against the first four stages of Eskom’s load-shedding by 2026. The City already provides load-shedding protection of up to two stages where feasible, which has been a big positive already for our regional economy.

‘The City’s Building for Jobs budget clearly shows how the City is re-investing the income from electricity sales to the benefit of our economy and job creation and to all in our city,’ said the City’s Mayoral Committee Member for Energy, Councillor Beverley van Reenen.