Cape Town’s V&A Waterfront is planning to double its solar energy capacity as part of its response to the ongoing power cuts imposed, on a rolling basis, across the country by national electricity utility Eskom.

This was stated by V&A Waterfront (V&A) CEO David Green at a media briefing late last month.

He reported that the directors and executives of the V&A Waterfront had determined that loadshedding was likely to be a long-term problem, given that so much of Eskom’s generating fleet was old and needed replacement. Current installed solar capacity at the waterfront was 2 MW. This would be increased to 4 MW in the near future, although Green did not give a timeframe. And there was the potential for even greater solar energy capacity to be installed in the coming years.

But, even when solar capacity reached 4 MW, that would still, at best, represent only 15% of the V&A’s energy demand, he cautioned. They were also piloting the use of small helical wind turbines, pointing out that there was a lot of wind at the waterfront. Larger wind turbines might be a possibility, later.

Quite apart from loadshedding, the V&A had committed itself to achieve a net-zero carbon-emissions footprint by 2035. Solar and wind energy would contribute to achieving this. And, also to this end, the waterfront would pilot a biomass power plant, which would use the waste produced by the many businesses (which included numerous restaurants) located in it.

At the moment, to deal with loadshedding, the V&A had installed no fewer than 48 generators. Originally functioning separately from each other, they were now all linked into a single network, connected by a ‘smart’ system. Likewise, the waterfront now had central tanks for the diesel fuel, which was fed to the generators by a network of fuel pipes.

However, Green cautioned, even once all the renewable power projects had been imple­mented, the waterfront would still need an external power supply to operate normally.

He also reported that the V&A was seeking to make itself independent of the Cape Town water supply. This was a consequence of the water crisis that afflicted the city during 2017 and 2018. This independence would be achieved by desalinating sea water, and a desalination plant had been piloted at the waterfront during the Covid pandemic. Such a move would protect the V&A from any future water crises, but reduce the stress on the city’s water supply and so also help it to handle any such crises in the future.

Finally, the V&A was also piloting a water processing plant, which would process and purify wastewater produced by the various activities at the waterfront.