SOUT Africa’s decade-long electricity woes could soon be alleviated as the energy regulator has given the green light for additional generation capacity by independent power producers (IPPs).
The National Energy Regulator of South Africa (Nersa) yesterday approved the registration of a further 16 distributed generation projects, mainly solar power, with a combined capacity of 211MW and a collective investment value of R3.65 billion.
Nersa said 11 generation facilities would be generating electricity for their own use, while five would be generating for commercial purposes.
Cas Coovadia, Business Unity SA CEO, said yesterday the fact that registration processes for the sixteen new generation facilities were processed within 19 days was very encouraging for businesses ready to generate energy.
"This amendment goes a long way to unlocking embedded generation contributing to the security of supply, attracting investment, and generating growth," he said.
These are part of structural reforms aimed at dealing with the energy crisis in South Africa by allowing private parties to generate electricity for their own use up to 100MW without a licence, even when such facilities wheel electricity through the grid and sell to non-related customers in a bid to ease the burden on Eskom.
The energy reform, however, has faced some challenges that have caused delays in implementation, including registration, grid connection and environmental approval bottlenecks.
However, Operation Vulindlela intervened in an effort to reduce red tape around the reform generally, as well as to support individual projects, with the first large registrations, involving two 100MW solar projects in the North West being approved late last month.
Nersa said all applicants had connection approvals from licence distributors, with 12 to be connected to the Eskom network and four to the municipal network in Gauteng.
Fifteen of the applicants will use solar photovoltaic technology and one will use wind turbine technology.
This comes as Eskom yesterday warned that the power system was very constrained owing to the continued shortage of generation capacity.
The power utility said load shedding may be required at short notice, most likely during the evening peak from 5pm to 10pm should there be any significant breakdowns.
"We currently have 2 195MW on planned maintenance, while another 15 950MW of capacity is unavailable due to breakdowns," said Eskom spokesperson Sikonathi Mantshantsha.
"Eskom cautions the public that as the shortage of generation capacity persists, the system will continue to be constrained with an elevated risk of load shedding over the coming weeks."
In its last State of the System update, Eskom said that it needed between 4 000MW and 6 000MW of additional generation capacity to plug the hole on the national grid.
Meanwhile, the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) said yesterday that load shedding in 2021 overtook 2020 as the most intensive year of load shedding to date, with load shedding concentrated in October and November, and dominated by Stage 2 load shedding overall.
The CSIR said the Eskom fleet Energy Availability Factor (EAF) continued its declining trend in 2021 with an average EAF of 61.8 percent for 2021, compared to the EAF of 65 percent for 2020, 66.9 percent for 2019 and 71.9 percent for 2018.
It said this was largely due to the increase of unplanned outages experienced by Eskom.
The CSIR released its annual statistics on power generation in South Africa for the year 2021, with highlights including the increased contribution of renewable energy technologies to the total energy mix.
BUSINESS REPORT