In light of the worsening loadshedding crisis scheduled for winter, Western Cape Premier Alan Winde led a meeting of the Western Cape Energy Council, which is working towards reducing the impact of loadshedding through the installation of containerised solar photovoltaic (PV) cells and battery storage.

This meeting included mayors from several municipalities in the province.

In distilling the objective of this project, Winde declared that “our aim is to pilot how we can speedily install containerised solar PV cells with battery storage in these municipalities which would stop loadshedding in these towns”.

The mayors and their cohort carried out presentations to the Energy Council on their capabilities to meet specific criteria set out in this initiative. Final municipalities will be publicly announced in June.

Through its Municipal Energy Resilience (MER) programme, the Western Cape government is working with five more municipalities to ensure that they are free from loadshedding. 

“The MER programme assists municipalities with funding for foundational energy studies to enable private and public sector power projects,” Winde said.

The Western Cape Energy Resilience Programme has been touted as the lodestar guiding the provincial government’s approach to ending blackouts and positioning itself as a hub for energy resilience.

Western Cape Local Government, Environmental Affairs and Development Planning Minister Anton Bredell expressed gratitude to the candidate municipalities for being less reliant on Eskom. 

“We believe that it is the responsibility of the [Western Cape government] to invest in infrastructure and systems that will enable the private sector to flourish and at the same time support local governments with their mandate to provide basic and essential services to our residents,” he said.

Western Cape Finance and Economic Opportunities Minister Mirielle Wenger indicated that “we are doing our homework to be prepared and plan for new sources of energy in a responsible way”.