THOUGHT LEADERSHIP ARTICLE
Solving the power crisis in SA By James Cumming, GM of African Clean Energy Developments
ACED’s De Wildt PV Project
UNLOCKING GRID CAPACITY AND IMPROVING GRID ACCESS PROCESSES ARE KEY TO HELPING SOLVE THE POWER CRISIS WITH RENEWABLES
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n many occasions, while on a Teams or Zoom conference call, negotiating construction contracts or funding agreements for renewable energy plants, the meeting has ironically been cut off due to load shedding. When the call resumes (for those lucky enough to have an alternate power supply), in response to the often-used, ‘sorry, load shedding’, we cheekily say, ‘we’re working on that’. The trouble is, it’s getting harder and harder to ‘work on that’ at the scale required and in the areas best suited to renewable energy projects. These areas have a vast stock of highly competitive, fully-permitted wind and solar projects, ready to be funded and built. The challenge is not because of
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issues that used to plague the renewables industry - overly burdensome bureaucratic red tape in developing projects, delayed and unpredictable timing of the Department of Minerals, Resources and Energy (DMRE) Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme (REIPPPP) Bid Windows (BW), or political interference. The renewables industry is facing a new challenge. There is extremely limited power line and transformer capacity for connecting additional generation to the grid in the Cape provinces. This lack of grid connection capacity is a serious issue as these areas, with high wind and solar resources, are home to more than 75% of the most competitive shovel-ready renewable energy project stock available.
FINANCIAL MAIL ESSENTIALS • GREEN ECONOMY 2023
James Cumming, GM of ACED
We must commend the Government, largely driven by the Presidency, for how, over the last 12 to 18 months, they have created an enabling environment for renewable energy and private power generation and offtake to help solve South Africa’s power crisis. The Government has mostly done away with protracted NERSA generation licensing processes and project-size thresholds. They have expedited permitting timeframes and made various government agencies available to unlock bottlenecks to bring generation online faster, where possible. Renewable energy is by far the cheapest form of electricity generation. It is sustainable and climate-friendly. One would therefore assume it should be completely unhindered in solving the power crisis.
