By Lindsay Dentlinger
The City of Cape Town plans to spend R2-million upgrading its statistical metering system to determine its exact energy savings.
The mayoral committee (Mayco) has given the city's electricity department the go-ahead to bypass standard procurement processes to appoint an identified company to get the system installed as soon as possible.
But the city says it remains in the dark as to the real reasons for Eskom's about-turn decision last week to shelve load-shedding.
Following a meeting between Eskom and the major metros on Tuesday, mayoral committee member for utility services, Clive Justus, said that although it welcomed the end to load-shedding, it was concerned that there were no alternatives being suggested for saving ahead of winter, when demand would inevitably increase.
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Justus said the decision called Eskom's credibility into question.
Tuesday's meeting is said to have centred largely on policy issues related to energy efficient initiatives, but the power utility was still a long way from implementing these.
Several benchmark and baseline studies to measure energy efficiency and incentives to introduce these measures, were also discussed at the meeting.
Justus said no technical reasons had been offered for the decision to end load-shedding.
After a month of load-shedding in April, Eskom, in a surprise move, ended it last week, without a warning to the city and leaving it wide open to speculation as to the real reasons for doing so.
Eskom said municipalities had done well to meet targets for reduced consumption but it was rumoured that the decision might have come from the political sphere, rather than from Eskom itself, to spare the country the international embarrassment caused by recent damage to sub-stations and other infrastructure as the city prepares for the 2010 World Cup.
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