Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis said that the City of Cape Town hoped to completely shield Capetonians from power cuts over time.
On Thursday, he outlined the metro’s three-phase independent power producer (IPP) plan before council.
The plan would provide protection for Capetonians from the first four stages of power cuts in the next three years.
The mayor said that in the first phase, the city bought 200 megawatts of solar power from IPPs.
It also included paying residents an incentive for the power that they saved.
Hill-Lewis explained what the third phase required: “The third is to buy a whole lot more, probably 500 megawatts or even more, of what is called dispatchable power, which simply means power that’s available when you need it at a flick of a switch.