Minister of mineral resources and energy Gwede Mantashe gazetted a key determination under the Electricity Regulation Act, on Friday, to enable procurement of more than 11,800MW of additional capacity for the national grid.
The new generation capacity will ease SA’s crippling power supply constraint and enable the retirement of some of Eskom’s older units. However, it will be at least mid-2022 before any of these are ready to generate energy.
The gazetting of the determination, which the National Energy Regulator of SA concurred with recently, is the necessary first step for the Independent Power Producer (IPP) office in the department to draw up requests for proposals from the market. The determination is based on the Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) — the government’s long-term electricity plan — which was finalised in October 2019.
The determination says that of the 11,813MW of generation capacity to be procured, 6,800MW will be from renewable energy; 513MW will be provided by storage options; 3,000MW from gas; and 1,500MW from coal. The IPP office will now draw up specifications for requests for proposals for each technology and bid window.
All of the 11,813MW will be produced by IPPs and bought by Eskom.
The first projects — most likely the renewable ones, as these are the quickest to build — are expected to begin generating energy by mid-2022.
Friday’s publication in the gazette moves forward what has been a painfully slow process from the publication of the IRP last October to procurement more than a year later.
The Western Cape MEC for finance and economic opportunities David Maynier welcomed the publication as a critical step to increasing electricity supply.
“We now call on the minister to maintain the urgency required to ensure procurement and power purchase agreements are finalised to bring these projects on to the grid, and we look forward to the minister providing more clarity on when and how municipalities can also participate as purchasers of electricity, where appropriate, and not only Eskom, as has been the historical precedent,” said Maynier.
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