Durban: 1st city in South Africa to have private energy contract

Ethekwini, the South African municipality that includes the port city of Durban, has become the first in the country to seek proposals for private power generation.

The municipality on Friday released a request for information for the supply of 400 megawatts of power in a bid to ease reliance on national utility Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd., which has subjected the country to intermittent power outages for more than a decade. It will also allow the city of 3.8 million people, which houses Africa’s largest port, to get more of its energy from renewable sources as Eskom relies almost entirely on coal.

Ethekwini is seeking a “diverse mix of sustainable, dispatchable and reliable power generation technologies,” the municipality said on its website,