GEORGE NEWS - The George Municipality’s move to explore alternative energy-generating sources is gaining impetus with a partnership between the municipality and private electricity trading company Enpower Trading.
George Mayor Leon van Wyk and the municipality’s electrotechnical services team attended a Wheeling and Trading Symposium hosted by Enpower Trading at the Hawthorn Boutique Hotel on Wednesday 8 February.
Energy wheeling is the delivery of electricity generated by a private operator in one location to a buyer or off-taker in another location via a third-party network (utility or municipality).
George Municipality intends to do wheeling services to explore available energy sources, steering them towards the municipal grid while also looking at a cheaper cost of electricity than Eskom’s current cost.
With all the privately generated energy coming into the grid, the municipality hopes to lessen reliance on Eskom and become energy secure.
From left: Gerjo Hoffman (CEO and co-founder at Open Access Energy), Phillip van Niekerk (Enpower Trading), Mzimkhulu Thebolla (mayor of Msunduzi Municipality), Leon van Wyk (mayor of George), Bongani Mandla (director of electrotechnical services – George Municipality), Jeandre van Zyl (Solar Energy Africa), Josh Dippenaar (Sustainable Energy Africa) and Jemaine Cupido (Bitou Municipality).
Countrywide interest
The speakers and panellists were Phillip van Niekerk of Enpower Trading, Jeandre van Zyl of Solar Energy Africa, Gerjo Hoffman of Open Access Energy, Josh Dippenaar of Sustainable Energy Africa, Nhlanhla Ngidi of Salga, Bernhard Teuteberg of Dedat Western Cape and Jemaine Cupido of Bitou Municipality.
The symposium attracted representatives from the energy sector and companies from George and other parts of the country, municipalities from the Garden Route District such as Mossel Bay, Bitou, Oudtshoorn, Hessequa and Knysna, as well as municipalities outside the district such as Swellendam Municipality, Nelson Mandela Bay Metro (Gqeberha in the Eastern Cape), and the mayor of Msunduzi Municipality (Pietermaritzburg in KwaZulu-Natal), Mzimkhulu Thebolla.
Wheeling leads in new era
In his opening address, Van Wyk said that the unreliability of Eskom’s electricity supply and the increasing intensity of load-shedding is causing huge disruption and damage across many production sections and the economy.
“From a municipal perspective, our KWH sales have naturally declined, even with households having to do their chores at times when electricity is available. While we are encountering power supply disruption, we need to look to innovation to take us forward into new opportunities.”
He said wheeling is the disruptive radical change that will take us forward into a new era of trading in electricity, creating generating facilities and transporting electricity to where it is needed.
“I am very proud of our team here in George that has moved the boundaries in their quest to find solutions. Last year as a team we set new challenges in saying we needed to mitigate the risks that our municipal infrastructure faced, ie, water treatment works, wastewater treatment works and pump stations during load-shedding. As 2022 progressed we also concluded that the solar PV route needed to be supplemented by the rapid introduction of battery energy storage.”
The first wheeling transaction took place in May 2022 at George Municipality, following the signing of the use-of-system agreements in July 2021.
From left ae Jemaine Cupido (facilitator from Bitou Municipality), Gerjo Hoffman (CEO and co-founder at Open Access Energy), Josh Dippenaar (Sustainable Energy Africa), Phillip van Niekerk (EnPower Trading), and Jeandre van Zyl (Solar Energy Africa).
Software
The billing process has for many years been done manually, requiring extensive time for verification and preparation of bills once the data was retrieved from the meters.
Director of electrotechnical services Bongani Mandla said the need for a freely licensed software pilot became evident when they considered wheeling and renewable energy scaling on the municipality’s electricity grid.
“The manual billing process was one of the main challenges and resolving this meant reducing reliance and pressure on key human resources, reducing potential errors that could occur in the billing process,” he said.
Mandla highlighted that the current George Municipality wheeling pilot consists of trade between one generator and four off-takers through Enpower Trading (a Nersa licensed energy trader) and the entire process has now been automated using Open Access Energy’s software.
“The municipality is working on further improvements to its wheeling projects and to incentivise the private sector (both generators and off-takers) to participate in this programme. These include creating a platform for customers to view their accounts and access their consumption and billing data in real time on a portal, working with Dedat Western Cape Government to speed up standardising the use-of-system contracts, as well as moving from the 30-minute reconciliation to a time-of-use reconciliation by latest end of March 2023,” Mandla explained.
ALSO READ: Wheeling options discussed at Symposium in George
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