City of Joburg switches on for inaugural energy indaba

John Perlman spoke to City Power CEO, Tshifularo Mashava about the Energy Indaba and what the goals are of this event.

In the wake of load shedding and rolling blackouts, the City of Johannesburg has hosted its first energy indaba to discuss energy usage in the city and how to reduce the dependency on Eskom.

John Perlman spoke to City Power CEO Tshifularo Mashava about the indaba and what the goals are of this event.

According to Mashava, Eskom currently supplies 90% of the energy in the city and one of the goals of the indaba is to diversify this supply and to ‘go green’ and use alternatives to coal.

A number of consumers in Johannesburg have already started attempting to find alternative, reliable sources of energy, especially with the frequency of power cuts and infrastructure failures.

Over the past years we’ve already seen some of our customers go off the grid. They are putting solar panels on their roofs, they’re putting on battery storage, we want to say to out customers, we want to partner with you on that journey.

Tshifularo Mashava, City Power CEO 

Above the issues of relying on Eskom, City Power has had a number of problems with its own infrastructure which is old and prone to breakdowns and fires, in many cases.

According to Mashava, City Power has an infrastructure investment backlog of around R26 billion which needs to be addressed to improve power supply.

Hopefully through the indaba we will see moves not only towards more reliable energy, but also to some environmentally-friendly alternatives.

To find out more, listen to the full audio below.

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