The Shoprite Group is wheeling renewable electricity at its headquarters in Brackenfell, Cape Town, marking its third site to implement this innovative energy solution.

The retailer becomes one of the first businesses to wheel renewable electricity through the city’s energy grid.

Wheeling involves the buying and selling of electricity between private parties, using an existing grid to transport power from where it is generated to an end-user. It creates greater access to affordable renewable energy and contributes to relieving the country’s electricity crisis.

Excess electricity generated by Checkers Hyper Brackenfell at Fairbridge Mall, is purchased by Enpower Trading, a NERSA-licenced electricity trader, who then facilitates the sale thereof back to the Shoprite Group for use at the retailer’s adjacent home office campus. 

“In 2023, our consumption of renewable energy nearly doubled to 103,234 MWh from 54,138 MWh in 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.

“In the coming years, our reliance on the national grid will be significantly reduced as the energy market steadily grows with the emergence of utility scale independent power producers and small-scale power generators selling their excess power to the city and other customers through embedded generation and wheeling,” says the City’s Mayoral Committee Member for Energy, Councillor Beverley van Reenen.

The Shoprite Group’s electricity wheeling efforts build on prior initiatives stretching as far back as 2016, when it began wheeling electricity at Checkers Newton Park in Gqeberha, Eastern Cape

In 2022, Checkers Sitari and Sitari Village Mall near Somerset West became the first premium supermarket and shopping centre in South Africa to operate entirely on renewable energy from wind and solar sources.