South Africa inches forward with private power projects

South Africa made some progress towards adding new generation to its underpowered electricity grid, signing power purchase agreements for 150MW of capacity from private projects by developer Scatec that were selected a year ago.

The government’s emergency power programme, also known as the risk mitigation programme, has experienced multiple delays as the nation heads for a record year of electricity cuts because Eskom is unable to meet demand. The state signed agreements to buy a total of 150MW of power capacity for three projects from the programme, the department of mineral resources & energy said on Thursday.

Although energy minister Gwede Mantashe in February 2019 predicted that such a programme to source new power quickly could have stations online within two years, none has been added to the grid.

The first projects were picked as preferred bids in March 2021 to source 2GW of generation. The majority of those were won by Karpowership, a supplier of floating gas-fired plants. However, it’s been held up by court cases and awaits various other approvals. The government did not sign any contracts for the Turkish developer of 1.2GW of planned capacity.

Solar, batteries

South Africa chose the three additional projects by Oslo-based Scatec in June last year that use solar and battery storage technology. Construction of those stations is expected to take between a year and 18 months, according to the department.

The nation’s so-called sixth bid window for 2.6GW of private renewable energy projects that opened in April is expected to close in August, the department said.  — (c) 2022 Bloomberg LP