LISTEN: Tshwane still plans to bring ‘white elephant’ power stations to life
The Tshwane metro wants to contract an outside entity to maintain the two power stations that have been gathering dust for eight years as part of its independent power supply plans.
A task team has been set up to scour for bids to reignite the non-operational Rooiwal and Pretoria West power stations.
But this time, Tshwane will venture for competitive bidding after its last effort collapsed under a cloud of controversy.
The aim is to protect Tshwane’s poor finances while cushioning residents from the harshest load-shedding.
Tshwane still aims to contract an outside entity to maintain the two power stations that have been gathering dust for eight years as part of its independent power supply plans.
Tshwane mayor Cilliers Brink told Rekord that as a means to reduce the city’s bulk electricity purchases from Eskom, an outside entity could better run the two facilities as part of an independent power producer (IPP) strategy.
“This will include becoming less dependent on Eskom.”
He said the metro planned to take control of its electricity and water infrastructures, which in turn would fix its ailing financial performance.
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.”
Brink said the assigned task team would go out to the market to solicit proposals.
“The previous mayor made a sincere effort in proposing the Kratos deal; however, the difficulty in the coalition was the unsolicited proposal (closed offer by a sole provider and not open to the public).”
Kratos Consortium is an international power producer.
Brink said with the current task team, the preference would be to ask numerous players to propose how to use the power stations.
“We have the benefit of weighing these proposals against each other for a great viable option.”
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 within the next year, we will have movement on energy independence,” Brink said.
He said the metro was further looking at IPPs to mitigate the dark times due to load-shedding.
LISTEN:
This comes against a background of the Kratos deal that brought dissatisfaction among the political parties running the metro.
Last year, Kratos offered it would rehabilitate the two disused power stations already owned by the metro at its own cost; however, opposition parties, including DA governing coalition partners, rejected it.
They raised concerns that:
– the process was driven by political influence by the then-mayor
– it was unclear if Kratos had a Nersa-approved licence to produce electricity
– there was also no engagement with Nersa or Eskom
The parties further raised concerns that Kratos was not the only service provider capable of revamping the substations and, therefore, approving its offer unsolicited was “unlawful”.
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.
Pretoria Chamber Of Commerce spokesperson Moira-Marie Kloppers said: “Bringing the private sector on board is no longer a luxury, it is a necessity.”
Kloppers said businesses in Pretoria and nationwide were bleeding – losing revenue, equipment damaged by power surges and increased cost of keeping the lights on – because of the power crisis.
“With the cost of load-shedding rising exponentially month by month and talk of higher levels of load-shedding being implemented, even talk of grid collapse intensifying, the Tshwane metro will not have the capacity or capital to invest in old power infrastructure and create new power solutions fast enough to mitigate the impact of the deteriorating power situation.”
Kloppers said Tshwane needed to use the stations to keep the local economy going in the face of state decline.
She said the metro should outline plans to incentivise private power suppliers by considering a similar model to the Western Cape, where excess power was bought back from businesses that generate their own.
“That model serves as an additional incentive besides the current tax incentives that are in place.”
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