Africa-Press – South-Africa. The City of Tshwane has given the green light to begin leasing the city-owned Rooiwal and Pretoria West power stations to independent power producers.
This comes after the council approved the second Rooiwal report on Thursday, January 25.
The plan to seek a 40-year lease deal for the city-owned power station follows a public participation process with various stakeholders, which Tshwane mayor Cilliers Brink said had an “overwhelmingly positive response which indicates that our residents understand that we need to take drastic actions to end load-shedding.”
Brink also said that this “is one of the six steps to get the two power stations running again.”
The city is looking to obtain at least 1,000 MW of alternative energy within the next three years, with the city looking to engage with independent power producers to “open up opportunities” for alternative energy production.
Whilst the City of Tshwane owns the stations, spending approximately R300 million annually in maintenance costs, the running of operations has been under the jurisdiction of Eskom since the utility was established.
Valued at over R360 million, Rooiwal and Pretoria West power stations have not been performing at maximum capacity for a while due to various reasons, including underinvestment in infrastructure.
According to a report by the city, the Pretoria West power station is not producing any electricity at the moment, whilst the Rooiwal station is producing 60 MW, 240 MW below its capacity.
Lardo Stander, chief economist at the City of Tshwane, told News24 that the two power stations have cost the metro more than R1 billion in direct costs over the past decade and that loss in revenue has also potentially run into the billions.
The city says that the leasing of the stations is allowed in terms of regulation 35 of the Municipal Asset Transfer Regulations. These allow for the control or management of municipal capital assets whilst requiring a public participation process for granting long-term rights to municipal capital assets with value in excess of R10 million.
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