MOSSEL BAY NEWS - Mossel Bay is among six candidate municipalities to participate in the Municipal Energy Resilience Project
In his 2021 budget speech delivered on 16 March, Western Cape Minister of Finance and Economic Opportunities, David Maynier announced that R48.8 million would be spent over the medium term and a further R20 million would be provided in the provincial reserves for the Municipal Energy Resilience (MER) Project in the Western Cape.
"We know load shedding costs the economy about R75 million per stage, per day in the Western Cape," Maynier said.
This, he added, was why the three-year MER Project was launched in 2020. The project is set to support municipalities in taking advantage of the new energy regulations to generate, procure and sell their own power.
The MER Project is spearheaded by the Green Economy unit at the Department of Economic Development and Tourism, working in collaboration with the Department of Local Government and Provincial Treasury to enable the development of energy projects and engagement with municipalities on multiple fronts.
"The procurement of energy at utility and municipal distribution scale, such as bulk energy purchases from Independent Power Producers (IPPs), under conditions of developing and evolving policies and regulations, is a complex and challenging task.
"Municipalities may not have the policies, plans, resources, funding or procurement expertise to procure wholesale electricity from sources other than Eskom, specifically IPPs.
"Neither have all municipalities’ electricity distribution systems been technically evaluated to clarify their readiness to support new electricity generation and energy trading," Maynier said.
To identify the candidate municipalities for the MER Project, a readiness evaluation was conducted to determine which municipalities were most equipped and met the conditions required to take advantage of the energy regulations to develop their own power generation projects and also procure power from IPPs.
Having announced the candidate municipalities, the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding will follow, as will the first phase of the MER Project.
This process will consider multiple, pioneering, renewable energy technologies and scales; cost options; scale of investment required; location issues; risks; municipal readiness needs; infrastructure needs; timelines to get capacity on to the grid; transaction and procurement mechanisms; and regulatory issues.
"While this project should enable municipalities to buffer residents and businesses from the impacts of load shedding, they will still continue to be connected to the national grid, as we won’t be able to meet 100 percent of energy demand through renewable energy at this stage.
"We will also work closely with national government to explore how the new energy regulations could lead to renewable energy generation projects within municipalities in the Western Cape," Maynier concluded.
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