President Cyril Ramaphosa is likely to announce an energy emergency as early as this week, Business Day understands, as part of what he calls a “comprehensive set of actions” aimed at solving the country’s escalating power outages.
Ramaphosa, whose campaign promises in 2019 to revive an economy ravaged by state capture and pandemic-induced restrictions are failing to gain traction, is expected to address the nation within days to outline the plan after high-level meetings in the past two weeks, a senior presidency official said.
“Government’s response must equal or be similar to that given to the Covid-19 pandemic and he wants those lessons to be referenced in this regard and all options explored and put on the table,” the source said.
Among the immediate measures Ramaphosa is considering is declaring an energy emergency, which would help rid the country of red tape.
Bureaucratic processes make it difficult to bring in new generation capacity, which is one of the standout proposals by the National Planning Commission (NPC).
The new measures are an explicit acknowledgment by the government that the steps it has taken so far to stabilise supply — which include allowing private projects to apply for up to 100MW in electricity generation — are not enough.
“While these actions are significant and will bear fruit over the coming months, they are clearly not enough to address the crisis that we face,” Ramaphosa said in his weekly newsletter on Monday.
“What the past two weeks have demonstrated is that we need to do more and do so with the utmost urgency.”
The announcement in the coming days would come as SA buckles under one of the worst power cuts since the country first became aware that Eskom’s power plants were falling apart in 2008, with power cuts lasting as long as six hours.
Last week, the NPC, chaired by minister in the presidency Mondli Gungubele, called for the implementation of an emergency plan to end load-shedding in two years.
The NPC suggested that 10,000MW of new renewable generation capacity and 5,000MW of battery storage capacity could be rapidly constructed and commissioned over the next two to three years by removing obstacles.
This includes scrapping the registration processes at the National Energy Regulator of SA, which are delaying the implementation of projects, and replacing them with online registration. The NPC also suggested a temporary exemption from local-content requirements for the construction and commissioning of new generation and storage capacity.
Separately, Eskom CEO André de Ruyter said the power utility engaged with various ministers and the president at the weekend. “Numerous meetings have taken place at an official level” with representatives from the presidency to find a solution that will allow for more generation capacity to be added to the grid as soon as possible.
“We are very much involved in the discussions and our inputs are being taken into account,” he said during a media conference on Monday.
De Ruyter said Eskom was “resolved to do everything in our power to not stand in the way of adding new capacity to the grid by any means possible”.
The first bidding round for independent power producers to invest in renewable energy projects on land owned by Eskom around its power stations in Mpumalanga yielded 18 successful projects. This will add 1,800MW of generation capacity to the grid. The land, to be leased from Eskom, offers direct access to the grid. A further 2,000ha for similar leases would be offered to the market by August, which would add another 220MW.
“We have also identified 30,000ha of land with grid access in a number of provinces, including Free State, Northern Cape and Eastern Cape. This will be released in phases. We are targeting quarterly releases, to allow independent power producers to get themselves in gear to bid for these opportunities,” De Ruyter said.
“We believe this will rapidly accelerate the addition of more capacity to the grid.”
The risk of load-shedding would remain until more capacity was added to the grid, he said. Eskom has long maintained that additional generation capacity of between 4,000MW and 6,000MW is needed to stabilise the generation system.
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