Cape Town - Ending load shedding would require more megawatts to be added to the strained national grid, President Cyril Ramaphosa said.
Addressing the nation last night, just as Eskom had announced another possible round of rolling blackouts, Ramaphosa said his administration was determined to cut red tape which hindered power generation.
“South Africa has installed capacity to produce about 46 000 MW of electricity, and at peak times we use about 32 000 MW of electricity. However, only 60% of this installed capacity is available at any given time due to some units going through planned maintenance and others having unplanned outages,” he said.
South Africa had an electricity shortage of 6000Mw, and in recent weeks 18 000Mw of generation capacity had been lost which had forced Eskom to implement Stage 6 load shedding.
Ramaphosa said to expedite maintenance at Eskom power plants, government would:
- Will increase budget allocations over the next 12 months.
- Eliminate red tape which has made it difficult to buy maintenance spares and equipment within the required period.
- Recruit experienced personnel, including former senior Eskom plant managers and engineers from the private sector.
- Surplus capacity will be bought from existing independent power producers, 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.
- Eskom will import power from neighbouring 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.
While Eskom’s R400 billion debt continued to hobble it, Ramaphosa said National Treasury worked to finalise a sustainable solution.
He said the government would remove the licensing threshold for embedded generation completely.
"This will enable private investment in electricity generation to rise to higher levels.
"While they will not require licences, all new generation projects will still have to register with the regulator and comply with the technical requirements for grid connection and our environmental legislation," said Ramaphosa.
Cape Town mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis on Monday announced two key policy changes that would be made as part of the City’s next steps on its journey to reduce reliance on Eskom and eventually end load shedding in the metro.
Hill-Lewis said the City was now looking to pay cash for power from commercial Small-Scale Embedded Generation (SSEG) customers to feed the local power grid and secure more generation capacity.
The City previously credited its customers' utility bill for feeding power to the grid up to a certain point but it would now start paying cash.
“Whether you prefer e-wallet, Apple Pay or EFT, we will send you money for the power you sell to the City,” Hill-Lewis said.
Hill-Lewis said the City will also drop the requirement for commercial and industrial customers to be net consumers - these customers would now be permitted to sell more electricity to the City than they used.
Hill-Lewis said these two policy changes would only apply to commercial and industrial customers at first but they intended to broaden this policy to all generating customers over time - including those with small residential solar PV installations.
Sandra Dickson, founder of lobby group Stop CoCT, decried the absence of consultation with homeowners and their exclusion from these policy changes.
She said this announcement was disappointing as the City confirmed its support to big business while residential ratepayers were left in limbo.
“One can conclude that the City is willing to bend its policies to its business customers while homeowners will not be assisted in any shape or form by the City to install solar/battery solutions.
“This is disappointing and short-sighted as the City clearly has no plans to promote homeowners' installation of solar solutions to reduce their energy costs,” Dickson said.
Hill-Lewis added that the bureaucracy from national government meant it would take several years for the City’s independent power producer projects to make a serious impact on load shedding in the city and thus they were looking for more immediate solutions.
He said that SSEG customers — particularly commercial and industrial generators with significant amounts of roof space available for solar PV generation — was a source of energy for the City that could be brought online even before IPPs.
“I look forward to seeing the interest from the market as we move to buy electricity from our residents,” Hill-Lewis said.
GreenCape energy programme manager Jack Radmore said: “The question around the ability to feed into the grid and increase the amount of that has been a question for many years, it is exciting to see what the City is doing to try and move forward and break new ground in that space.”
City energy executive director Kadri Nassiep said they hoped these policy changes would increase renewable energy on the local grid, permit bigger systems for the City to purchase their excess generation, enable greater private sector investment into energy generation and improve the business case for commercial PV plants as no energy gets "wasted' or curtailed.