Eskom slaps conditions on emergency bidders to stop grid hogging

Eskom has imposed conditions to access the national grid on 1 850 megawatts worth of projects in South Africa that developers including Karpowership and Electricite de France SA have struggled to complete since they were awarded in March 2021.

The right to access the grid is “conditional based on the projects achieving certain milestones by December 2023,” Eskom said on Wednesday in a response to queries. “This is in line with Eskom’s objective to have projects connect to the grid as soon as possible and to discourage capacity hogging.”

Grid access is in short supply in South Africa. The amount of transmission capacity is insufficient, and in the wrong part of the country, for the swath of renewable energy projects being erected in a race to alleviate the country’s worst ever power outages. In December, a government award for 3 200 megawatts of wind energy failed because there was no grid connection available.

Delays have beset the so-called emergency power tender in which Karpowership won the rights to develop 1 220 megawatts of capacity. Acwa Power Co and TotalEnergies SE are among the companies that also hold stakes in groups trying to develop projects under the program.

© 2023 Bloomberg