Cape Town has set a record for the number of applications received to install solar power as South Africa’s electricity shortage worsens.
More than 2 300 of these requests have been made this year as of end-April, with the figure of almost 700 in March the highest to date, according to a City of Cape Town statement on Monday. As an incentive, the city is offering to buy excess rooftop solar power from businesses and homes in a programme that will start during the year.
South Africa is experiencing an unprecedented level of power cuts, with rolling blackouts occurring daily due to frequent equipment breakdowns at state-owned Eskom, driving up costs for businesses forced to generate their own electricity. The struggling utility is unable to meet demand and various solutions proposed by the government to end the crisis have failed to take hold.
11 000 applications
Cape Town, which is governed by the opposition Democratic Alliance and includes some of South Africa’s most affluent suburbs, has a programme to procure its own power and take over supply to the city from Eskom, according to mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis.
Cape Town has received almost 11 000 applications for small-scale embedded generation since it started keeping records of this in 2020. The majority of requests have been residential, while most of the installed capacity is for commercial sites, according to the data. — (c) 2023 Bloomberg LP
