Cape Town Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis.
Misha Jordaan, Rooster Pictures
- Eskom’s continued implementation of load reduction cost Cape Town millions per stage per day.
- Cape Town Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis said the country was facing a massive energy crisis.
- Hill-Lewis published a “Mayor’s Minute” on Friday, a longstanding tradition in which previous Cape Town mayors would publish an annual review at the end of each past year.
Cape Town Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis said the country was facing a severe energy crisis costing the metro millions per stage, per day.
Hill-Lewis published a “mayor’s minute” on Friday, a longstanding tradition in which previous Cape Town mayors would publish an annual review at the end of each year.
Hill-Lewis, who served as mayor for a full year after Cape Metro was retained by the district attorney during local government elections last year, admits that “the challenges in our city are immense and time is passing quickly.
“After a year, the mission remains clear: we are building a city where everyone can experience true hope for a safer, cleaner and more prosperous future,” the mayor said.
Hill-Lewis added that the social, economic and political context in which the city government operates is characterized by high levels of poverty, unemployment, economic slack, the enduring legacy of apartheid social planning and great national political uncertainty.
“These challenges are highlighted by the impact of the worst power cuts in the country’s history, with Eskom implementing record load cuts for more than 200 days a year,” he said.
The city has previously said it has protected customers from more than 60% of Eskom’s load shedding or 1,700 hours out of 3,000 load shedding hours.
On Saturday, Eskom announced a failure of five generating units overnight, forcing the utility to implement stage two load shedding until further notice.
South Africa is facing an energy crisis that is deeply damaging from an economic point of view. Eskom load shedding costs the Cape Town economy R75 million per stage per day.
“This translates into a loss of value of tens of billions of rand to the local economy each year. At the time of writing, Eskom was implementing stage 5 load shedding nationwide, which means that South Africans are without power for 7.5 hours a day, split into three separate 2.5-hour blocks,” he said.
Hill-Lewis added that Cape Town’s Steenbras hydroelectric facility had become a shining light in the fight against head loss.
“Thanks to years of excellent and continuous maintenance and management, the facility is the best performing power plant in the country today and can protect city customers from two stages of load shedding some times and one stage of load shedding. load almost all the time”. over time, safeguarding R150 million in value for every day of load disconnection,” he said.
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Hill-Lewis said Eskom’s implementation of regular Stage 3 and Stage 4 load shedding (sometimes escalating to Stage 5 and 6) means Cape Town still experiences significant economic damage, which comes at the cost of the jobs.
“Ending load disconnection will be the biggest stimulus for the local economy, and this has been a central feature of our governance program this year,” he stressed.
