GCIS
The government will table special legislation in Parliament on an expedited basis, to enable the easing of regulatory hurdles in a bid to address the country's energy crisis.
Addressing the country on Monday night, President Cyril Ramaphosa, said the special legislation will also facilitate investment in new generation capacity for a limited period.
The President announced a number of measures, including removing the licensing threshold of 100 megawatts announced last year, to facilitate private investment in larger, utility-scale projects.
Ramaphosa said the power utility would also be unbundled to create a state-owned transmission company.
To end load shedding, however, the President said the country needed to urgently add much, much more capacity to the grid.
"Our second priority is therefore to accelerate the procurement of new capacity from renewables, gas and battery storage," he said.
In this regard, the President said the relevant government departments were working together to ensure that all projects from Bid Window 5 of the renewable energy programme could start construction on schedule.
"One of the first steps we took to address the electricity shortfall was to revive the renewable energy procurement programme in 2018. Since then, over 2 000 MW of solar and wind power has been connected to the grid through Bid Window 4 of the programme."
"A further 2 600 MW of capacity has been procured through Bid Window 5, which will begin to add capacity from early 2024. We have started to diversify generation by allowing parties other than Eskom to generate electricity."
In June last year, the government raised the licensing threshold for new embedded generation projects from 1 MW to 100 MW, thus removing the licensing requirement for generation projects up to 100 MW that are connected to the grid.
He said this measure enabled these generators to have the ability to sell electricity to one or more customers.
"We also changed the regulations to allow municipalities to procure power independently. A number of municipalities are already in the process of doing so," Ramaphosa said.
Eskom recently made land available next to its power stations in Mpumalanga for renewable energy projects, which were expected to unlock 1 800 MW of new capacity.
The amount of new generation capacity procured through Bid Window 6 for wind and solar power will be doubled from 2 600 MW to 5 200 MW.
"These actions are significant and they will make a difference over the coming months and years. What the most recent load shedding has made clear, however, is that the actions we have taken and continue to take are not enough."
