Joburg aiming to become more independent from Eskom, says Mayor Phalatse

Johannesburg Executive Mayor Mpho Phalatse says the city is positioning itself to become more energy independent with less reliance on Eskom for its power needs.

Phalatse made the remarks on Monday during the inaugural two-day Joburg Energy Indaba at the Sandton Convention Centre.

The mayor lamented the country’s energy crisis saying the City of Johannesburg, as South Africa’s economic hub, could not realise its full economic potential due to Eskom’s lack of generation capacity and related load shedding.

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She said in order to ensure adequate and uninterrupted electricity supply, the metro’s sustainable energy strategy would introduce an energy mix that includes Independent Power Producers (IPPs) and small-scale power generators.

“Clean energy provided by independent power producers will not only improve the city’s energy security, but also respond positively to the climate change imperative,” Phalatse said.

With Joburg procuring about 90% of its power from the state-owned Eskom, Phalatse said the city could not turn around its energy supply challenges without working with partners in the private sector.

“For the city to be able to meet its energy requirements in the shortest possible time, very close collaboration is necessary with the private sector for the requisite investments to materialise.

“The city recognises that we don’t have the funding to keep up with the required investment in power infrastructure, hence private-public partnerships are seen as the most feasible way forward.

“The power sector generally, including embedded generation, energy storage and smart grids could leverage huge investment in our city and enable us to create the jobs we desperately need,” she said.

Phalatse said the energy options under consideration by the metro were gas, smart grids and renewable energy options, including solar power.

Joburg’s energy crisis

Joburg’s MMC for Environment and Infrastructure Services, Michael Sun, said Johannesburg probably had the “most difficult” energy crisis compared to the other metros in the country.

Sun explained that for example, if Eskom implements stage 2 load shedding, the city actually implemented stage 4 rolling blackouts.

“If you compare the number of residents, businesses, lives and livelihoods we have in the city – you begin to understand that stage 2 is not stage 2 in Johannesburg. We suffer a loss that is estimated to be between R60 billion and R120 billion [due to load shedding] across the country.

“Now you can imagine, we could use that money that we suffer as a loss in building our economy and investing in our infrastructure.”

Electricity infrastructure

Earlier, Phalatse said they were aware that not all power disruptions in the city were caused by Eskom and load shedding.

She said some of the power disruptions were due to the deliberate and criminal damage to electricity infrastructure by cable thieves.

“Cable theft is particularly problematic and needs to be tackled head-on.

“We’ve been dealing in the last few weeks with cases of theft and vandalism of infrastructure, and I must really commend our national and provincial leadership, particularly in law enforcement, that have held hands with us and assisted us to fight this theft and vandalism of infrastructure.”

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