Cape Town mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis has announced that 15 commercial electricity suppliers will start wheeling electricity through Cape Town’s grid in July.

The city’s Mayoral Committee has greenlit the project that will allow third parties to sell electricity using Cape Town’s grid infrastructure, as part of a long-term project to reduce the impact of Eskom loadshedding.

The pilot project should culminate in the full-scale implementation of wheeling in the Western Cape capital by the end of the year.

“Wheeling allows people to buy electricity from each other using existing grid infrastructure,” says Hill-Lewis.

“The future is now as Cape Town gears up for the first electron to be wheeled between our pilot project participants this July.

“This is the business end of our pilot, following the development of the billing engine and the completion of wheeling agreements,” he notes.

Cape Town last year invited applications to participate in the wheeling pilot, with 15 participants – representing 25 generators and 40 customers – now confirmed and about to start wheeling.

“The city is getting on top of the complexity of wheeling, which requires new skills, regulatory and policy changes, billing development and bilateral agreements,” says Energy MMC Beverley van Reenen.

“Our programme will allow electricity to be wheeled over both the municipal and Eskom distribution networks in Cape Town.

“Sales will be governed by bilateral power purchase agreements within a market environment, as opposed to a regulated environment, as the price of the energy is set between the parties and not by the city, Eskom or the National Energy Regulator of South Africa.”

Cape Town also already has the enabling legislative framework in place for wheeling, with the city’s electricity supply by-law allowing for the retail wheeling of electricity through the network.

Wheeling will take place at 11 kV and higher voltages.

The 15 wheeling pilot participants that submitted valid applications to generate and sell power are Amazon Data Service South Africa; Brinmar Private Energy Trading South Africa; Distributed Power Africa; Energy Exchange of Southern Africa; Energy Partners Utilities; EnerJ Carbon Management; Enpower Trading; Floating Solar; Make a Difference Ventures; NEURA Trading; Phofu Solar Plant; POWERX Proprietary; Redefine Properties; Solar Africa Energy; and Swish Property Seven.