The department of mineral resources and energy issued a statement on Wednesday saying it had not conducted a survey to determine where the licensing threshold for embedded generation should be set but had received public comments to this effect.
In April, minister Gwede Mantashe proposed setting the threshold at 10MW, meaning anyone who wanted to build a bigger private generation facility would need to apply for a licence from the National Energy Regulator of SA (Nersa).
Organised business and the Minerals Council SA had lobbied for the threshold to be set at 50MW. The proposal, in the form of an amendment to the Electricity Regulation Act, is open for public comment.
In his budget speech in parliament on Tuesday, Mantashe made the surprising claim that this decision had been determined through a survey of 10,000 people.
“There has been a lot of noise about this but our research and our survey of 10,000 people showed overwhelming support for our move. The majority in the market say they are not ready for 50MW. The issue of debating between 10MW and 50MW is an academic one. The reality is the market is not ready for 50MW,” he said.
Asked for further details of the survey the department said on Wednesday that there was no survey and that the minister had been referring to public comments received in response to his proposal.
“The minister’s remark with regards the 10,000 responses refers to comments received by the department in response to the schedule 2 amendment of the Electricity Regulation Act, gazetted on April 23 2021.”
The public comments would not be released publicly as “the receipt of such comments by the department is standard and for internal use only”, the department said.
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