Cape Town mayor, Dan Plato, has revived the City’s plans to take Jeff Radebe’s department of energy to court over the distribution of power, after the recent spate of load shedding the country has endured.

As reported by EWN, the City of Cape Town is trying to have its distribution of power handed over to independent power producers (IPP) and away from the clutches of the embattled power utility.

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How is the City of Cape Town dealing with load shedding?

Plato revealed this news at a press briefing that was held in Bellville on Wednesday.

He noted that the City was awaiting a date from the South Gauteng High Court on a court bid that was filed two years ago.

City wants to purchase power directly from IPPs

The City, Plato revealed, wants to “loosen itself from Eskom”. As things stand, the power utility has the exclusive rights to purchase renewable energy, for resale, from IPPs.

Essentially, Eskom is the middle man between renewable energy sources and municipalities.

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This, Plato stated, is a hindrance for the Western Cape, which has a lot of private energy producers.

If approved, the City will be able to purchase up to 400MW of electricity from IPPs as surity in instances where load shedding is implemented.

This would relieve the business environment,which has suffered great losses since power cuts were reintroduced on Friday, 15 March.

“We want to loosen ourselves from Eskom. There is a lot of private energy producers in the Western Cape. We want to spread our wings,” he explained.

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Are IPPs the answer to municipalities’ electricity woes?

IPPs are privately held corporations with facilities to generate power. As it was revealed by the Minister of Public Enterprises, Pravin Gordhan, at a press briefing on Tuesday, IPPs own 1 000MW of power generated from gas turbines, all of which is exclusively available to Eskom for procurement.