• During his 5th Energy Digicon Western Cape Premier Alan Winde and peers outlined the province’s energy resiliency plans.
• This includes allocating R61.9 million toward energy initiatives in the province.
• This money will be spent with transparency and effectiveness in mind.

This week Western Cape Premier Alan Winde hosted his 5th Energy Digicon. These Digicon events are hosted to promote transparency within government for the benefit of citizens.

This week’s event hosted Western Cape Infrastructure Minister Tertius Simmers ahead of the official launch of the Provincial Department of Infrastructure on 1st April. The minister took the time to outline the government’s commitment to addressing the energy crisis over the long term. However, the minister also said that the 2050 Western Cape Infrastructure Framework plan would include immediate solutions for the ongoing energy crisis.

“While this is a long-term strategy to develop and maintain key infrastructure projects, we have dug deep to find immediate solutions to the energy crisis. For the 2023/24 financial year, we have allocated R61.9 million towards energy initiatives,” said Simmers.

That R61.9 million is to be allocated as follows:

• R9.8 million for project support for independent power producers’ procurement in Stellenbosch;
• R1 million to go towards project preparation to support gas power exploration;
• R3 million for grid transmission upgrades;
• R24 million allocated for 976 solar geyser installations at key housing projects with a focus on indigent households.

It wasn’t stated as to what the remaining R24.1 million in the budget will be used for.

With that having been said, the provincial government has allocated more than R1 billion toward its energy resilience plans.

“Our provincial budget has now officially been approved. We are putting significant resources, more than R1 billion, into our energy resilience plan, which has seen us having to reallocate funds from other departments to mitigate the impact of blackouts on our people and economy. This demonstrates the urgency we are employing to deal with this crisis. This ‘budget of action’ will see multiple provincial government departments knuckle down and spend our taxpayers’ money transparently and effectively to help bring worth and dignity to our province,” said Winde.

In addition to the budget allocation details, Winde hosted Special Advisor to the Premier on Energy, Alwie Lester. The advisor highlighted how the provincial government aims to address demand side management.

This will be done through the following focus areas:

• A public communication campaign around managing demand and efficient use of electricity;
• Driving an energy-saving campaign that will form the basis of the Western Cape Government’s loadshedding exemption request to national government, Eskom, or the National Energy Regulator of South Africa (NERSA);
• Incentivising the use of alternative energy sources for SMMEs;
• Incentivising the use of energy-efficient products and services for the public;
• Piloting a load management system to help manage peak hours usage.

“Our demand side management initiative will be accompanied by an incentive for residents to reduce their power use,” Winde added.

The premier also said during the digicon that he had urged the new minister of electricity to keep an eye on the issues that the Koeberg delay has caused.

“This means we could find ourselves in an even more precarious situation come winter when more power will be used. We must stay on top of this issue,” said Winde.

[Source – South African Government][Image – CC 0 Pixabay]