Energy

Cape Town’s “electricity wheeling” explained

Luis Monzon

8th June 2023

The City of Cape Town is set to begin paying for and receiving electricity from 15 private power producers.
Local government hopes this will be a further step in its plan to reduce loadshedding in the Western Cape.
The 15 companies, including an Amazon subsidiary, will be “wheeling” the electricity through Eskom’s infrastructure.

On Wednesday, the local government of Cape Town celebrated a new breakthrough in its ongoing electricity wheeling project.

According to a press release sent to Hypertext, 15 different commercial electricity entities, meaning privately held companies that generate power as opposed to the state-owned utility Eskom, have started “wheeling” power through the Mother City’s grid.

Premier Alan Winde enthused that the progress in the project “will complement all efforts by the Western Cape Government and municipalities across the province to reduce power blackouts and our province’s dependence on Eskom.”

“By opening up our energy plans to the private sector, we are empowering businesses, allowing them to become part-and-parcel of the solution to the energy crisis. We are practically and proactively demonstrating that our whole-of-society approach works, especially in a crisis, when it is most needed,” the premier continued.

Adding that “electricity wheeling” is an integral part of The WCG’s Energy Resilience Plan’s new energy development programme, established with the express purpose to end loadshedding in the DA-run Western Cape.

What is electricity wheeling?

But what exactly is electricity wheeling? It is basically another way to say electricity distribution. According to Eskom’s definition, wheeling is when electrical energy is delivered from a generator, for instance, one operated by a private company, to an end-user ie. the municipalities of the City of Cape Town.

The reason this type of power delivery is called “wheeling” is that it leverages already-existing infrastructure or grid, like Eskom’s towers and cabling, to send the energy to an end user. However, in this case, Eskom does not receive any payments directly from said end user.

“Wheeling does not necessarily mean that the electrons entering the transmission network at point A will be used at point B – it’s rather the act of balancing the energy from the generator with the end user consumption within the time-of-use (TOU) period, thus wheeling is more of a financial transaction. In South Africa, wheeling can be used for any form of power available in our energy mix,” the utility explains.

Locally, wheeling is mostly used by customers like households and businesses to purchase privately generated renewable energy, thus eliminating the need to purchase power from Eskom and have to deal with loadshedding due to generation shortages.

There are several renewable providers in the mix for Cape Town, according to a list from Cape Business News. These include: