The Shoprite Group has joined forces with Enpower Trading to participate in the City of Cape Towns renewable energy wheeling pilot.
The programme enables Shoprite to produce renewable energy at Checkers Hyper Brackenfell at Fairbridge Mall, where they have a large solar system, and transport any excess energy they generate to their head office campus through the municipal grid.
Enpower Trading, with its experience in municipal wheeling since 2022 in the George Municipality, is facilitating this process.
A lot of hard work is going into the citys energy programmes. Our wheeling pilot is organised in six coherent work packages that set the basis for contractual agreements, municipal wheeling and associated feed-in tariffs, metering and data requirements, wheeling implementation, which includes contracts and metering vetting as well as testing and evaluation, says the Citys Mayoral Committee Member for Energy, Councillor Beverley van Reenen .
After the initial test phase, Shoprite will have the opportunity to expand its use of renewable energy for its stores and other operations by purchasing more green energy from Enpower Trading. This will help Shoprite become more environmentally friendly and reduce its reliance on non-renewable energy sources.
Checkers Hyper Brackenfell is the latest within the group to start wheeling electricity. Checkers Newton Park in Gqeberha, Eastern Cape, started wheeling electricity back in 2016.
'In 2023, our renewable energy consumption nearly doubled to 103 234 MWh from 54 138 MWh the previous year. With renewable electrons now flowing through Cape Town's energy grid, we are another step closer to our climate goals of being carbon neutral by 2050, says Sanjeev Raghubir , Chief Sustainability Officer at the Shoprite Group.
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