The Shoprite group has joined forces with Enpower Trading to participate in the City of Cape Town’s renewable energy wheeling pilot programme.

The programme will enable Shoprite to produce renewable energy at Checkers Hyper Brackenfell in Fairbridge Mall, which has a large solar system, and transport excess energy to head office through the municipal grid.

Enpower Trading, with experience in municipal wheeling in George since 2022, is facilitating this process.

“A lot of hard work is going into the city’s 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 city’s Mayoral Committee Member for Energy Councillor Beverley van Reenen.

After the initial test phase, Shoprite will be able to expand its use of renewable energy to 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 among the group’s facilities wheeling electricity. Checkers Newton Park in Gqeberha, Eastern Cape, started wheeling electricity 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 Shoprite.