City of Cape Town Energy MMC Councillor Beverley van Reenen has hosted a World Bank delegation to the city’s Steenbras hydro pumped storage scheme.

The Steenbras plant is used to protect city-supplied customers from up to two stages of loadshedding, where possible, and is also indicated to be pivotal to the city’s plans to protect residents from up to four stages of loadshedding by 2026.

Major investment in Steenbras is under way.

The World Bank delegation, headed by World Bank Eastern and Southern Africa VP Dr Victoria Kwakwa, toured the Steenbras facility to get a first-hand view of this energy offering.

It followed a meeting with Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis that came on the back of his recent engagements with World Bank representatives, in Washington DC, in the US.

“The World Bank has been supporting the city through targeted technical assistance to a number of directorates including energy, future planning and resilience, and water and sanitation. We are all very excited to grow this partnership and to make sure Cape Town is fully supported in all regards as we move to implementing our plan to provide loadshedding protection of up to four stages where possible within the next two years.

“This forms part of a broader infrastructure investment and technical assistance drive that the city is on as we build the ‘city of hope’. The confidence that global partners such as the World Bank display in Cape Town is vital for delivering on our R120-billion ten-year infrastructure portfolio, which includes projects to enhance resilience and build energy and water security,” Van Reenen said.

“Our short-term loadshedding mitigation plans will be achieved largely through a mix of the use of the Steenbras hydro pumped storage scheme (up to two stages); 500 MW of dispatchable energy; and demand management programmes such as Power Heroes and load curtailment,” she added.