Cape Town - More and more Cape Town residents are submitting solar PV installation applications to the City as Eskom continues to implement power cuts.
The City’s energy directorate said its officials recorded an overwhelming increase in rooftop solar installation applications, with August 2023 seeing the most applications to date.
According to the directorate, it received more than 1 500 small-scale embedded generation applications in August.
Cape Town mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis said: “Capetonians are installing solar PV and battery systems to avoid load shedding and take advantage of forthcoming City incentives to pay cash for power generated by residents.
“Each new month has broken the solar PV applications record for four months straight since May 2023, with over 100MW and counting of installed capacity in Cape Town.
“We are determined to make it more viable for households to go solar, with a cheaper AMI meter option to be rolled out early in the new year, alongside Cape Town’s cash-for-power incentives for households and businesses to sell their excess power to us.
“Enabling more rooftop solar also forms part of our broader plans to add 1GW of independent power from various sources to Cape Town’s grid over time.”
Hill-Lewis said the first 650MW is forecasted to come online by 2025/26 to protect against the first four stages of Eskom’s load shedding.
He said: “This will be achieved through a mix of Steenbras Hydro Plant, 500MW of dispatchable energy and demand management programmes, including the forthcoming Power Heroes incentives for households to flatten peak usage.”
Last month, the City of Cape Town announced that it was working to shorten authorisation times of solar PV installation applications by developing its system into an easy-to-use online applications portal.
The City-led initiative was seemingly in response to ongoing calls for the local municipality to ramp up its turnaround times for solar PV installation applications from role-players within the energy industry.
Energy Expert Wido Schnabel said the more people converted to solar power, the more energy could be fed back into the grid. Wido said that through this, more people would be actively contributing to alleviating South Africa’s energy crisis.
Mayco member for energy Beverly van Reenen said that the City was moving towards a future grid for all where customers could use and generate electricity as part of an integrated network.
“This is the exciting future of the changing energy environment, internationally and in our backyard,” Van Reenen said.
Durbanville resident Nqobile Mokoena, whose household currently uses a power inverter during load shedding, says she is in the process of setting up a solar PV system and going off the grid.
Mokoena said: “I love the convenience of having power throughout the day. Although I have not yet completed setting up my solar system, the inverter powers my household, and I can continue with my daily schedule uninterrupted.
“My electricity consumption has not changed, but again the convenience of having power trumps that for now, and when I get my solar system set up I know I’ll start to see the difference and also join the programme the City has, getting paid to feed my excess energy back into the grid,” she said.