The Gauteng provincial government has tasked City Power with leading efforts to rid the province of load shedding. Provincial treasury has allocated over a billion rand to the utility with a little over R 400 million to be transferred immediately to finance its power generation ventures which include refurbishing existing infrastructure to increase generation capacity.
Finance MEC Jacob Mamabolo and his local government counterpart Mzi Khumalo on Thursday visited the projects that the money is earmarked for an urge City Power officials to fulfill their promise of bringing an additional fifty megawatts of electricity into the grid as part of ongoing efforts to increase capacity, reduce and ultimately eliminate load shedding altogether.
City Power CEO Tshifhularo Mashavha and Board Chairperson Bonolo Ramokgele promised the two politicians that the first phase ( additional 50 megawatts) can be available as early as April 2024, an undertaking that the MECs urged the utility to make sure its delivered on.
“The first hundred megawatt entails this refurbishment work. This is where we are saying within six months, we should be able to fire this engine because we just need to get new control units for the site and then complete the refurbishment at Durban Street. It therefore means that by May-June the hundred megawatts should be available in the grid,” said Mashavha while briefing the government delegation at John Ware Substation.
The MEC’s told the City Power team that failure was not an option and that the government was particularly keen on the first phase of the project succeeding.
“We tell investors, we tell the people, the markets work on that, people plan on that. Then after a year it hasn’t happened then we look like this because I mean you can see we are taking what you say then we go give feedback. If we look at twelve months now and we say to the people within this period we should be somewhere better and then what if it doesn’t happen, that is my worry, what we call value for money,” said Mamabolo adding that may make the government allocate more money.
Mamabolo said the government was concerned about a loss of investor confidence and believed the success of the partnership with City Power can turn things around if projects are completed within set timelines.
“End of March, early April you say that we can hold you to that because if we deliver the fifty (megawatts), you know the assurance, the confidence, the trust levels will go up. I can assure you that this will be a game changer. I’m really pleading with you to please work in such a way that we will not miss that target. Can we see that target as the world cup date, it can’t be missed. The problem will be if you don’t deliver in April. For our problem to be off load shedding it’s a big confidence to the investors because the losses we are suffering in the economy are quite big. So, I’m just saying to you that please meet the target of mid-April, you can miss other targets but don’t miss the first one,” said Mamabolo.
Mashavha said all in all an additional 250 megawatts is expected to be added to the grid in 2024.
“Now parallel to that we are saying we need modular unit for gas, the modular unit for gas we can put about a hundred megawatt additional at Durban Street and we can also put a hundred and fifty additional megawatt at Cottesloe which therefore means on the gas from the modular unit we can look at an additional 250 megawatts. Now with the modular unit they take about six to eight months to install and to commission those so I would give it twelve months cause then you must do the connectivity to our substations and to the Eskom grid as well so it means on the gas we must budget about twelve months but on the jet fuel we can budget six months but the twelve months run concurrently with the other six months,” she said.