Cape Town - As residents across Cape Town continued to suffer from unreliable electricity and high tariffs, the City assessed progress on its new waste-to-energy project at the Coastal Park Landfill site in Muizenberg on Tuesday that would produce electricity from landfill gas.
This project formed part of its efforts to ensure overall reliable and sustainable electricity for residents across the city.
Urban waste management Mayco member Grant Twigg, together with energy Mayco member Beverley Van Reenen, visited the site on Tuesday and said it would soon be producing electricity from landfill gas with the practical completion of the works expected at the end of July this year.
While this project would only produce 2MW, a very small fraction of the City’s total demand, Twigg said the successful implementation of this project was an important milestone towards sustainability.
The excess electricity produced would be exported to the City of Cape Town’s electricity grid and benefit its residents.
However, Twigg said it was unlikely to provide extra protection from load-shedding or enable a reduction in tariffs.
He reiterated that this was an important step forward in the City’s mission to reduce reliance on the state power utility, and to meet emission reduction targets.
“Converting the gas to electricity reduces emissions that contribute to global warming and could damage human health. This will also help offset purchases from Eskom as well as reduce peak demand where electricity is most expensive. The project also reduces the odour at the site,” Twigg said.
Vissershok landfill site was the next site earmarked for a waste-to-energy project. Twigg said this would also help the City assess whether wider implementation was viable.
South African National Energy Development Institute’s (Sanedi) general manager Barry Bredenkamp said the benefits of using landfill gas to produce electricity were numerous, but key was the fact that this process removed and avoided the emission of additional harmful gases that were normally released straight into the atmosphere.
“This gas is furthermore put to productive use by generating much needed electricity in the current constrained energy situation the country finds itself in,” Bredenkamp said.
Bredenkamp said waste-to-electricity projects such as this had the potential to address the issue that South Africans are suffering from unreliable electricity – although it was limited at this stage.
“In the current situation we find ourselves in in the country, every kWh (unit of energy) generated from alternate sources should be welcomed and if this technology is replicated at all sizeable landfill sites in South Africa it could make a sizeable difference,” Bredenkamp said.
He said there was a cost to installing the technology used for the process of extracting and converting the waste gas to energy and the connection to the distribution grid, but this was significantly cheaper than the current generating costs from Eskom.
kristin.engel@inl.co.za