City must boost its power generation capacity

CONSUMERS are facing significant hikes for the 2025/26 period.

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THE City has the land and technical expertise to invest more ambitiously in solar farms, says the writer.

(Independent Newspapers Archive)

This would be shortsighted and unfair.While Eskom’s municipal bulk purchase price increases (around 11.32% effective July 2025) and subsequent adjustments have driven up costs even further, the City must not treat this as an inevitable burden to be shifted directly onto households and businesses. Instead, Cape Town should urgently exhaust every avenue to source cheaper alternatives and aggressively expand its own generation capacity, particularly renewables.

It must also establish microgrids quickly and at scale targeted at supporting poorer communities. Cape Town already has ambitions for greater energy independence through rooftop solar incentives, small-scale embedded generation, and partnerships, but these efforts seem to me to be too slow and limited amid repeated Eskom-driven price shocks.

The City has the land, sunlight, tides, wind resources, and technical expertise to invest more ambitiously in solar farms, wind, hydro, biogas, battery storage, and localised microgrids. Such investments would hedge against volatile bulk prices, create jobs, reduce long-term costs, and enhance resilience.