The City of Cape Town has announced an increase in its cash for power programme in the financial year 2024/2025.
Sales only are at a reported R16,0 million and incentives at R4,4 million.
Incentives are up by a notch from last year’s R4,9 million, and R16, 5 million in sales.
Sales were at about R10,6 million sales and incentives at R3,6 million in the financial year 22/23.
This means Cape Town businesses and households have broken through the R50m earnings mark since the start of the City’s Cash for Power programme in 2022/23.
The metro buys excess solar PV power from small-scale generators, with over 1, 800 small- scale power sellers now participating.
The City said in a statement, the City first credits a power seller’s total municipal bill automatically down to zero, generating a cash saving.
Geordin Hill-Lewis, Mayor of Cape Town said ‘we are delighted to reach the R50m mark in Cash for Power earnings for Capetonians. In fact we are on track to double earnings in 24/25 compared to the first year of our programme. This shows the extent to which households and businesses have invested in solar, and we are glad to see so many people selling back to the City in exchange for cash savings on their municipal bills and actual cash payouts. We will buy as much excess power from Capetonians as they are able to sell us. The return of Eskom’s load-shedding shows that we must keep moving at pace towards a more energy secure Cape Town that is less reliant on Eskom.
Cape Town has SA’s most advanced plans to buy power on the open market. Over three years we are further investing over R4 bn in electricity grid upgrades to enable this dynamic, decentralised energy future. “
There are currently 1 842 sellers benefitting from Cape Town’s Cash for Power Programme, about 1, 090 of this amount, are residential and 752 are commercial/industrial.