The Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality has announced that the deployment of energy efficient technology has started paying off for the metro. Several programmes have been put in place and retrofitting or the addition of new technologies, has seen almost 16 200 systems changed. The municipality has saved around 1.25MW through simply replacing street lights in various areas. Retrofitting has taken place at customer care centres in Alberton, Benoni, Boksburg, Brakpan, Edenvale, Germiston, Kempton Park, Springs, Tembisa, among others.
Metro’s Spokesperson, Sam Modiba states that the metro had to start implementing energy efficiency practices with its own building and lead by example. “We have installed 14 000 occupancy sensors in our customer care centres, community halls, clinics, fire stations, libraries and metro police offices across the region.” He added that before this, lights were on 24 hours a day for the entire year. “This was due to the fact that most buildings have centralised switches which controlled all of the lights and therefore nobody took responsibility switching them off after working hours. Post installation on weekdays, it is estimated that they burn 10 hours a day, saving 14 hours between Monday and Friday and saving 24 hours on weekends and public holidays,” Modiba said.Further to this, the Metro has rolled out 11 400 low pressure solar water heaters in various wards across the municipality for the 2011/12 financial year and has rolled out over 30 000 since the inception of the rebate programme in 2010. As a first, they will also launch a unique solar plant project at the O R Tambo Precinct on September 18. This is the first plant of its kind to be owned and operated by a municipality. The plant is set to produce 200kW of electricity through 860 PV (photovoltaic) solar panels on 2 500 square meters of land. This energy is enough to power about 133 low cost houses. 
