New Energy
Cape Town to Pay Homes for Excess Solar in South African First
- City will also allow businesses to sell power to each other
- Tourist hub to add as much as 1 gigawatt of independent power
South Africans endure regular blackouts due to years of neglect and mismanagement that have left the state-owned utility unable to keep up with demand.
Photographer: Guillem Sartorio/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
Cape Town, South Africa’s second-largest city, will pay residential households for excess power that they generate from their solar installations in a first for the country grappling with daily cuts.
“We will buy as much solar power as households and businesses can sell to us,” Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis said in a statement Monday. Separately, the city will also allow businesses to sell energy to each other, which could add 350 megawatts of decentralized electricity to Cape Town’s grid, he said.