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Don’t invest in that costly inverter just yet…

In a parliamentary Q&A session, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced that South Africa is on the precipice of instituting significant changes in the country’s flagging electricity sector, according to BusinessTech.

Yesterday, Ramaphosa stated that plans are in place to implement a system that allows for multiple electricity providers to compete with Eskom in providing low-cost, reliable energy to South African customers.

As reported by Engineering News, in the course of his Budget Vote speech the President emphasised that the South African government is “seized with the need to get as much new generation capacity onto the grid as possible, as quickly as possible,” in light of Eskom’s limited capabilities.

Ramaphosa outlined a six-step process that will, ideally, enable South Africa to manage the current electricity crisis while moving towards more sustainable solutions.

As condensed by Full View, Ramaphosa’s proposed programme entails the following:

• Improving the performance of existing power stations, and ensuring that additional units at Medupi and Kusile come online according to schedule.
• Ensuring that projects from existing procurement programmes, including Bid Window 5, are able to… connect to the grid as quickly as possible.
• Accelerating private sector investment in generation capacity under 100 MW.
• Enabling Eskom to purchase surplus power from existing power producers.
• Supporting municipalities to procure power independently, and encouraging households and businesses to invest in small-scale solar power installations and feed energy to the grid.

Ramaphosa also referred to a new Bill, which would enact legislation that divides Eskom into discrete operational units:

“The Electricity Regulation Amendment Bill provides for the establishment of a separate transmission company and a competitive market for electricity has been published for comment.

He concluded by saying that they are working to table the final version in Parliament in the coming months.

[source:businesstech]