Premier Alan Winde has welcomed a tender soon to be issued by the Saldanha Bay Municipality (SBM) which will seek competitive proposals from independent power producers to create power generation plants from which the municipality will buy its electricity.
The tender will go to market by the end of October 2023 for five months. Saldanha Bay Executive Mayor, Andre Truter, said, “Our tender speaks specifically to baseload and what Saldanha Bay’s energy needs are which are about 100 MW. The tender is written in such a way that whoever it is awarded to can scale up beyond 100 MW.”
Baseload power refers to the minimum amount of electricity needed to be supplied to the power grid at any given time.
“We as the Western Cape Government are enabling municipalities across the Western Cape through our Energy Resilience and Municipal Energy Resilience programmes to take steps to achieve energy security. We are now seeing one such intervention come to fruition with this tender going to market shortly,” said Premier Winde.
Mayor Truter stressed, “The tender is very clear that the project can only be made up of gas and renewable energy sources.”
The aim is to have electricity tapped into Saldanha Bay’s power grid through this project within 3 years.
The Premier added that finding lasting solutions to the energy crisis will take time. “However, it is very encouraging and fills me with hope that Saldanha Bay has reached a point where the municipality can now proceed with an energy project that will make a significant difference in the lives of the town’s residents and economy”.
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