By Martin Pollack

Electricity customers in Cape Town may soon be able to buy power that has been generated in a sustainable, renewable way from a small, independent producer.

In a pilot project to assess interest among industrial, business and domestic consumers - plans to sell renewable electricity, also known as green electricity or green power, from Darling Wind Power on the West Coast.

By purchasing renewable electricity, residential, commercial and industrial electricity consumers will able to reduce carbon emissions without having to buy any new infrastructure, operate new technology or change their electricity supply arrangements.

The customer will be charged a premium per kilowatt hour (KWH), and is guaranteed that every unit of renewable electricity purchased will be matched by the input of the same number of units from Darling Wind Power into the national grid.

But purchasing such units does not guarantee that the exact electricity supplied will be wind-generated, as it is mixed with all other electricity conveyed over the electricity grid.

Darling Wind Power will generate 13,2 gigawatt hours (GWH) (13 200 megawatt hours) of electricity using four turbines of 1,3 MW in size each. One megawatt hour (MWH) is approximately enough to supply the energy needs for one middle-income house per month; or enough energy to heat the water for 1 200 baths.

At the recent ICLEI congress - hosted by the City of Cape Town at the Cape Town International Convention Centre - a local company, GreenX Energy, co-ordinated the successful supply of green electricity to congress venues.

"Multinational companies and local businesses with an international market are the first to take seriously the need to purchase renewable electricity," says Joubert Steyn of GreenX.

"They are realising the profound effects that climate change will have on their business, as possible impacts include loss or disruption of markets and supply chains, the introduction of carbon taxes and additional, unforeseen business risk."

Investment in renewable electricity, through the premium fee, will help create a revenue stream that stimulates investment in renewable energy projects in Cape Town and South Africa. Ultimately this will help the City meet its target of getting 10% of its energy from renewable sources by 2020.

The impact of coal-fired electricity

The environmental impact of using 0,001 MWH (1 KWH) of coal-fired power in South Africa (calculated by Eskom in 2001) is:

Source: City of Cape Town