South Africa’s power utility Eskom will procure surplus electricity capacity from its neighbouring countries and independent power producers (IPPs) in a bid to stabilise the energy crisis.
President Cyril Ramaphosa last night said South Africa needed to urgently add much, much more capacity to the grid to end load shedding as Eskom has an electricity shortage of up to 6 000MW. The plan to import electricity from countries such as Zambia and Botswana was among the measures he presented.
Last month, a combination of factors resulted in 18 000 MW of generation capacity being lost and forced Eskom to implement stage 6 loadshedding.
Ramaphosa said the country’s challenge in adding capacity to the grid was the time that it took for any energy project to receive the necessary approvals and commence construction.
He said the process, from design to commercial operation, has tended to take more than three years due to lengthy regulatory processes and red tape.
New legislation would be tabled to speed up the approval processes of new projects.
“Over the next three months, Eskom will take additional actions to add new generation capacity to the grid on an urgent basis,” Ramaphosa said.
“As an immediate measure, surplus capacity will be bought from existing independent power producers.
“These are power plants which built more capacity than was required and can now supply this excess power to Eskom.”
Ramaphosa said Eskom will now also purchase additional energy from existing private generators such as mines, paper mills, shopping centres and other private entities that have surplus power as part of addressing the shortage of megawatts,
“Eskom will now import power from these countries through the Southern African Power Pool arrangement.
“Eskom will also use interim power solutions, such as mobile generators, to supplement current generation capacity for a limited period.”
Other measures includes removing the licensing threshold for embedded generation completely, from 100MW previously, following the success of this reform and the enthusiasm shown by the private sector.
Ramaphosa said this will enable private investment in electricity generation to rise to higher levels. He said also regulations to enable households and business to supply electricity to the grid from roof-top solar installations would be enacted.
Trade union Solidarity welcomed the government's plan to tackle the power crisis, saying that it represented an anxious leap in the right direction.
Solidarity chief executive Dr Dirk Hermann said the government's move towards a more decentralised system for power generation was the only workable and sustainable solution to South Africa's power crisis.
"As also outlined in Solidarity's earlier plan, the encouragement and facilitation of small-scale power generation on a large scale is of crucial importance to stabilise our power grid," Hermann said.
"Through deregulation and the removal of regulatory barriers, we free the private sector and communities up to present creative and resilient solutions to the crisis.”
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