Matthew Cruise
Johannesburg - In President Cyril Ramaphosa’s State of the Nation Address (Sona) on Thursday evening he announced several things regarding the energy crisis and the steps to be taken by the government in order to address the load shedding that has taken place.
Some key points that he talked about were that South Africa was entering into a national state of disaster in order to address this crisis, similar to what took place during the Covid-19 pandemic.
I have my concerns about this step and previously voiced concerns that it won’t do much in terms of actually bringing new generation capacity onto the grid, which is what is primarily needed in order to meet our electricity demand. And looking at how it went with the pandemic, can we really say that it was a successful endeavour?
Switching to a national State of Disaster, do we know with confidence that the money that flowed from it was well spent? Meanwhile, we know that R500 billion has been investigated for misappropriation or disappearance as a result, so I am concerned about the efficacy of declaring a national State of Disaster.
What was exciting to hear was that residences and businesses would be incentivised through tax incentives to get solar power. This is exciting because it’s one of the quickest ways to get power onto the grid by incentivising the public to get solar installations.
This is an exciting progression that is taking place, but it was previously indicated in July 2022 last year, so we’ll have to wait to see when things will actually be implemented.
Cape Town is leading the charge in terms of being advanced with getting solar power onto the grid and incentivising solar power by implementing a tariff in the middle of the year for businesses and then toward the end of the year for residences.
So how quickly can the government really act in this regard and incentivise solar to be put on the grid? It will be more likely a measure to assist in alleviating load shedding for the individual who gets the solar panel, so we’ll still see load shedding taking place as a result of even that incentivisation.
And finally, thankfully, the president provided a forecast of what he said would be a reduction of the energy crisis that we’re experiencing, where within six months Eskom is going to have the ability to procure energy that can get onto the grid, and he said that within 12 to 18 months this energy crisis should have the gap closed.
So thankfully, that means that next year, in 2024, we can see whether these things have actually taken place because my projection is 100% that we will not have a reduction of load shedding within this year, but it will actually increase by about 50% this year alone.
So in 12 to 18 months, when Ramaphosa says the gap should have been closed between what we need in the country for power and what is being produced, that will be the exact time that the elections are taking place for the ANC government to get kicked out of power.
Matthew Cruise is the head of business intelligence at Hohm Energy. The views expressed here are his own.