Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis welcomed Treasury’s decision to exempt the city from competitive bidding or tendering to buy power from homes and businesses.

Efforts by the City of Cape Town to become the first “load shedding” free metro are gaining traction, as it’s now allowed to buy electricity back from private suppliers.

“We have exemption and that means that we can start to put in place a system in which people with solar panels on their roof can feed power back to the city and be paid in cash for that power,” Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis said.

Hill-Lewis welcomed Treasury’s decision to exempt the city from competitive bidding or tendering to buy power from homes and businesses.

As the metro forges ahead with an IPP tender, it hopes this latest move will shield the city from four stages of power cuts in the future.

The mayor said that payments to commercial customers would be possible before June, and before the end of year for any Capetonian who’s legally allowed to sell their excess electricity and feed it back into the local grid.

By: Melikhaya Zagagana & Graeme Raubenheimer

For more information visit: ewn.co.za

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