The Bloemfontein metropole remains under national administration and requests for interviews with Centlec have gone largely ignored over the past month.
CAPE TOWN - Eyewitness News has found there was little to no evidence showing that the City of Mangaung’s embattled energy utility - Centlec, is making any meaningful headway in finding alternative energy sources.
The Bloemfontein metropole remains under national administration and requests for interviews with Centlec have gone largely ignored over the past month.
While most other metros are more advanced in their IPP plans, claims of corruption, infighting and irregular spending have followed Centlec’s officials this year.
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Centlec’s 2020 to 2023 business plan simply said it knew solar and gas alternatives were becoming increasingly popular and that it can no longer rely on just procuring power from Eskom alone.
The document mentioned that a feasibility study was under way.
Later, in Centlec’s annual report for 2020 to 2021, it read that an unnamed solar farm project hadn’t begun yet, but that a study costing R1.8 million would continue.
By early this year, Centlec was more focused on implementing a turnaround strategy to deal with rampant irregular spending.
Stellenbosch University’s sustainable energy expert Professor Sampson Mamphweli said he agreed that it appeared Mangaung was lagging far behind in the IPP space.
“Maybe when they are out of administration, they will look at what other metros are doing and then maybe they can start with some of these programmes.”
Just a month ago, Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana said that despite their interventions, Mangaung’s finances and service delivery record had yet to show signs of improvement.
BUFFALO CITY SHOULD BE FAR AHEAD
Mamphweli said once upon a time, Buffalo City Metro was on its way to becoming South Africa’s first renewable energy hub, but that never happened.
Buffalo City told Eyewitness News that it’s working on a power plan.
Mamphweli said that’s all good and well, but the city could’ve been further ahead in its IPP plans if it stuck to critical projects in the area.
He said the plan was to build a solar farm with the help of a local solar PV manufacturing plant: “Basically, they were going to manufacture solar panels and then establish this solar farm within the municipality and then feed into the grid. But because of legislation that was not so clear then, there were delays in that project and led to uncertainties and challenges with the PV manufacturing.”
Mamphweli said there was also a wind energy project in the works that halted partly because of legislation and issues with the East London Industrial Development Zone.