Deputy Mayor and Mayoral Committee Member for Spatial Planning and Environment, Alderman Eddie Andrews, City Speaker Alderman Felicity Purchase, Mayoral Committee Member for Energy, Councillor Beverley van Reenen and senior officials in the City’s Energy Directorate and International Relations unit welcomed the delegation at the facility. Their Excellences Houmed M’Saidie, the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries, Environment and Tourism, and the Minister of Energy, Water and Hydrocarbons, Aly Ibouroi, led the delegation from the Comoros Islands.

‘It was a pleasure to host the Comoros delegation at the Steenbras facility. Today, the delegation was able to see exactly how the facility works and what it entails to run and maintain the Steenbras Hydro Pumped Storage Scheme. Between February and July 2022, we protected residents in City-supplied areas from 722 hours of Eskom load-shedding,’ said Alderman Andrews.

‘We thank the Comoros delegation for this opportunity for us to show them what we are doing in Cape Town. The Steenbras Hydro Pumped Storage Scheme is a world class facility and we were able to protect thousands of residents from the worst of load-shedding for hundreds of hours over recent months. Our teams work hard to ensure that the Steenbras plant is well maintained at all times and we are continuing to invest in our energy infrastructure to provide reliable services to residents across the city.

‘The City’s programme of ending load-shedding over time is making steady progress. The programme is focusing on energy diversification to enhance security of supply with the City’s own build projects, small-scale embedded generation programmes of buying excess power from qualifying customers, wheeling and independent power producer programmes,’ said Councillor Van Reenen.

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