Ekurhuleni, the industrial hub of more than three million people to the east of Johannesburg, may have a head start in the race between South African cities to buy their own power to alleviate crippling outages imposed by Eskom.

A programme to procure as much as 700MW of electricity that began in 2016 is coming to fruition, with one funder saying a project to build a 41MW solar plant at a cost of about R1-billion will begin by the end of this year.

“We have secured the equity, and once that closes we can finalise debt and basically start overnight,” said Justin Naidoo, the CEO of African Growth Partners, which is working with five independent power producers. “We will be ready to start building the project before the end of the year.”

Cape Town and Durban have asked for proposals for companies to provide them with power and Johannesburg plans to do the same.

In addition to reducing power cuts, the cities will also primarily source power from renewable sources, meaning that there will be less impact on global warming.

While the government in 2020 changed legislation to make it easier for cities to buy electricity from suppliers other than Eskom, Ekurhuleni had already started its own process to get power on board and was able to quickly apply, the city said in a response to questions.

Agreements

In December the city signed 20-year power-purchase agreements with 41 out of 47 companies that had bid to supply power, and those firms are now finalising where they will build the plants and secure funding. Some companies may start producing power in 12 months’ time, the city said.

Cape Town, by contrast, is still gathering proposals by prospective contractors and may select bids later this year. Johannesburg is yet to formally request proposals.

African Growth has secured more than R1.5-billion of funding for projects such as the one it is backing in Ekurhuleni, Naidoo said. It’s also considering backing five projects that will use biogas from waste dumps in the city to produce power, he said. — Loni Prinsloo and Antony Sguazzin, (c) 2022 Bloomberg LP