[imagesource: Armand Hough / African News Agency]

South Africa is experiencing stage two load shedding through until 5AM on Monday.

In a statement, Eskom said this was due to “a shortage of generation capacity following breakdowns of two more generating units”.

And now it’s raining across parts of the country and the coal will get wet and – well, you know the drill.

However, Cape Town is spending the day (or at least 6AM through to 10PM) basking in the relative luxury of stage one load shedding. This is due to the generation of additional capacity using the City’s Steenbras Pumped Storage Plant and other interventions.

If Cape Town mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis gets his way we could soon be kissing Eskom’s grid farewell for good, reports BusinessTech:

The City of Cape Town will publish documents detailing its upcoming procurement of power from independent power producers (IPPs) within the next two weeks, says Hill-Lewis…

[He] said the documents will include the announcement of tenders for the purchase of electricity from IPPs and timelines for bringing IPP-generated electricity onto the city’s supply network.

“It has become clear to the City of Cape Town that if we wish to halt the damage caused by Eskom’s monopoly over electricity generation, we have to take matters into our own hands. The only way for us to provide reliable and affordable electricity to our residents is to source it from elsewhere,” he said.

Yes, please.

Hill-Lewis also commented on the impending electricity price hike, with Eskom having recently filed an application to raise prices by 20,5% from April 1.

They’re the fools but we must all suffer as a result.

There’s certain to be pushback from political bigwigs, but Hill-Lewis stated he hoped government would “respect our constitutional mandate to deliver electricity to our residents, and not stand in our way of making Cape Town the first load-shedding free municipality in South Africa”.

We’re not asking for much. We just want to keep the lights on.

After all, Eskom CEO Andre De Ruyter yesterday said the power utility “had the system equivalent of a cardiac arrest”. You might get away with the first one or two but in the end…

[source:bustech]