Tshwane mayor still plans to ditch Eskom
“This is not a simple task as taking notes from Cape Town and implementing in Tshwane, although they are cutting edge. Tshwane needs to look into the state of the networks on whether they can feed alternative energy supplies.”
Tshwane mayor Cilliers Brink said that Tshwane needs to lessen its dependence on Eskom to stabilise its finances.
“We have to reduce our dependence on single suppliers, and our task team will look into the Rooiwal power plant,” said Brink.
“We believe this can be done.”
Brink was briefing the media on July 4 at Tshwane house on plans to gain control of finances and lessen its reliance upon Eskom.
This was as a task team was working to investigate whether Tshwane could generate and procure 1 000 megawatts of about 2 600 megawatts of electricity.
He said the proposal would be based on a lease agreement approved by the council, as Tshwane did not have the resources and internal capacity to operate the facility.
The lease with private equity would look at details such as upgrades to the power plant.
“We need to leverage private sector expertise and resources. We believe doing so as soon as possible is important.”
Brink said the metro was currently examining whether its electrical grid was correctly configured to handle the power generated from the Rooiwal plant.
“This is not a simple task as taking notes from Cape Town and implementing them in Tshwane, although they are cutting edge. Tshwane needs to look into the state of the networks and whether they can feed alternative energy supplies.”
If this was achieved, Tshwane must investigate if it would also be able to feed power in case of a large-scale outage.
Brink announced in May that the task team had been set up to look for bids to restore the non-operational Rooiwal and Pretoria West power stations.
These two power stations have been gathering dust for eight years as part of their independent power supply plans.
Brink said the two power stations were of enormous benefit to the metro as they were already available and strategically placed near a gas pipeline.
“The likelihood of having them running as coal-powered stations is limited.”
He said the previous mayor made a “sincere effort” in proposing the Kratos deal; however, since it was an unsolicited proposal (a closed offer by a sole provider not open to the public), it ran into political problems.
Kratos Consortium is an international power producer.
The Australian company had offered R48.6-billion to refurbish, operate and maintain the Pretoria West and Rooiwal power substations for 30 years.
The plan was to use gas to generate power to avert the effects of Eskom load-shedding and create jobs.
Brink said with the current task team; the preference would be to ask numerous players to propose how to use the power stations.
The task team will now look for bids while a public participation process will also take place for greater influence on the power plans.
“Hopefully, we will have movement on energy independence within the next year,” Brink said.
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