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Peninsula: Table Bay Harbour, Molteno, Toll Gate, Camps Bay, Claremont, and Dock
Road. The smaller lighting plants at Rondebosch and Wynberg had already been shut

down. Wynberg and Dorp Street stations were converted into Distribution Stations.
Kalk Bay was the last to embark on a new scheme of its own.

Kalk Bay builds its own generating station.

The Kalk Bay Municipality installed oil-lamps in 1897, which was five years after
Rondebosch had converted to electric streetlights. Over the next ten years, the

Municipality increased the number of oil-lamps from 38 to 75, but was never really
satisfied with them. (Fig. 2.13). When the need arose for a proper sewerage system, to

be driven by electric pumps, it presented an opportunity to install electric streetlights

with not much additional expenditure. Cost estimates for the lights and the electric
distribution system amounted to ₤12,000 or only 20% of the total project. (The final

account with Westinghouse as at 31 May 1906 for the complete plant was ₤17,385 18s.

2d. but this included the pumps and electrical system for the sewerage plant.) Act no.7
of 1904 was passed to “Empower the Municipal Council of Kalk Bay to supply

electricity for lighting and other purposes within the Municipality.” Thomas Bennett,
the Municipal Engineer, was sent to England to raise capital and place contracts for

machinery and plant.

Scowen’s Hotel had been opened in January 1902 and electric lights were installed - the

first in Muizenberg. They were evidently powered from a private plant, of which there
were quite a few in the country. Jimmy Logan at Matjesfontein even had one in the

middle of the Karoo - driven by a windmill! He was also said to have had the first
water-borne sewerage system in the country! Kalk Bay’s combined Municipal Drainage

and Electric Light Works Scheme was approved by the ratepayers at a meeting in April
1903.

While Kalk Bay was still installing oil-lamps, Cecil Rhodes had ambitions of bringing
cheap power to the Witwatersrand gold mines from the Victoria Falls. The Victoria