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The Democratic Alliance (DA) in Tshwane welcomes the adoption of an Embedded Generation and Energy Wheeling Policy by the City of Tshwane, following a process of public participation.
This policy was prepared by the DA and our coalition partners under the mayorship of Cilliers Brink, and it represents an important step towards greater energy independence. However, the budget adopted by Tshwane’s ANC-led coalition undermines the objectives of the Policy.
Wheeling refers to the process of the city’s electricity network being used to distribute power generated by independent power producers. A city can play a critical role in enabling investment in power generation, which also creates jobs, by offering competitive wheeling tariffs.
The more than R1 per kilowatt hour which Tshwane will charge for wheeling as from 1 July is significantly higher than the 31c per kilowatt hour charged by Eskom. It is also far higher than the average charged by most other metros, making Tshwane an uncompetitive place for Independent Power Producers (IPPs) to invest.
It is even more than the generation cost of an industrial scale solar PV plant, effectively ensuring that IPPs won’t invest in Tshwane.
It is almost as if the ANC-led coalition which took charge over the city in September copied and pasted our work, but didn’t understand the budget has an impact on the policy.
The other possibility is that the ANC-led council is doing Eskom’s bidding, protecting the power utility from the reforms which have been undertaken in the energy market. A DA-led council will review the sky-high wheeling tariff in line with the other reforms we have undertaken to promote as many producers of electricity as possible.