Introduction
There was a lot of doom and gloom talk in South Africa until very recently, with the #Imleaving campaign picking up steam again. However, since the beginning of 2024, a lot of that talk has died down. Some attribute it to the ANC’s voter share dipping below 50% in the last general elections, which forced them to work with opposition parties in a Government of National Unity (GNU). However, a lot of it has to do with significant progress in installing renewable capacity. Today, the country has more green capacity than Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo’s total reliable baseload capacity. That is quite an achievement. But more must be done to ensure that the poor are not left behind.
Dark days
South Africa witnessed an unprecedented number of loadshedding (power outages) days in 2023. In total, there were 335 days and 6950 hours of power outages, with forty-five days of stage six loadshedding (i.e.8 to 10 hours without power), eighty days of stage four loadshedding (twelve blocks of to-hour power outages over a four-day period) and seventy four days of stage three loadshedding (nine blocks of to-hour power outages over a four-day period).
Obviously, the frequent power outages caused a lot of chaos, especially for businesses, most of which relied completely on the national power utility, ESKOM, for power. Millions of man-hours were lost as businesses had to cancel orders, furlough workers or chase areas with electricity in order to send urgent emails and messages.
To deal with loadshedding - which first started in 2007 after over 5 million households were connected to the power grid with very few new build projects – President Cyril Ramaphosa announced an Energy Action Plan in July 2022. The plan was built around five pillars: 1) improving ESKOM’s energy availability factor (EAF); 2) turbocharging private investment; 3) fast-tracking new generation capacity by Independent Power Producers (IPPs); 4) announcing incentives to boost rooftop solar installation; and 5) long-term changes to the electricity sector.
He announced amendments to Schedule 2 of the Electricity Regulation Act allowing or empowering all entities, public or private, with the means to do so, to build generation capacity. Crucially, he also appointed an electricity czar, Kgosientsho Ramokgopa, to oversee the plan. Ramokgopa worked very hard to clean up corruption at ESKOM and sure enough, ESKOM’s EAF steadily climbed and stabilised around the early sixties. Doomsayers predicted that the plan would come to nought because ESKOM was too rotten to be fixed.
When ESKOM’s improvements held, the story changed to the idea that ESKOM was just working hard to ensure electricity supply until the May 2024 elections and that loadshedding was going to come back with a vengeance after that.
Renewables to the rescue
However, those predictions were missing one thing: a silent revolution was underway and South Africa was one of the biggest importers of solar panels and inverters in the world in 2023.
Thanks to a combination of loadshedding and incentives such as tax exoneration and holidays for rooftop PV system purchases, installed capacity shot up from 1000 MW in 2020 to over 5,200 MW by the end of 2023. It is currently sitting at just over 6000 MW.
Procured IPP capacity also increased. By 2017, 6422 MW of electricity had been procured from 112 IPPs, of which 3162 MW was connected to the grid by the end of the year. That number grew to about 4,200 MW by 2019. By 2024, about 96 Independent Power Producers had connected about 7,500 MW to the grid. In total, the Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme has procured 13,266 MW from 140 IPPs.
In terms of wind capacity, 34 wind farms now provide the country over 3,400MW of wind power. There is more to come soon. Electricité de France (EDF) has announced for example that it is building 63 MW wind power, 355 MW solar PV and 75 MW of battery storage capacity (i.e. 1.2GW in total).
In terms of battery storage, South Africa has about 512 MW of installed capacity and there is a process underway to add 1,200 MW to that. South Africa’s IPP database can be accessed here. Renewable projects typically take less than three years to build compared to the Medupi and Kusile coal plants that took more than a decade to complete.
ESKOM recently announced that its EAF was currently sitting at 63.2%, with Kusile, Majuba, Camden at above 70% and Duvha Power Station at 81.9%.
The fact that South Africa now has just under 14 000 MW of solar, wind and battery is a source of great pride for the country.
What about quality affordable access for all?
There is a caveat though. South Africa’s IPP’s have largely ignored households and community associations in their procurement plans. The massive investments in renewables by large corporations means that the cost of kilowatt-hours (kWh) are going up – because they want to make a profit. This trend will continue to constrain spending by households. That is a big problem. South Africa has always prided itself in the affordability of its electricity. Now many households are having to limit how much electricity they use because it is too expensive.
This is a problem. The Alternative Information and Development Centre (AIDC) as well as the Co-operative and Policy Alternative Centre (CPAC) have argued for many years that the government should use other sources of funding, such as pension funds for example, to ensure that ESKOM owns most or all of the country’s renewable generation capacity. This would ensure that the poor are not locked out of supply. Trade unions are also not optimistic about the future in a scenario where most new build projects belong to IPPs and ESKOM is being split into three companies (the National Transmission Company of South Africa has started operations).
With loadshedidng a thing of the past, the pace of rooftop PV installation has plummeted. Going forward, the consideration to acquire rooftop PV units is going to be based on ensuring some degree of independence or helping to reduce family or national carbon footprint.
This is the age of the prosumer, but more must be done to ensure that households in villages and small towns, especially in the poorer provinces, can also access electricity affordably. It is the government’s responsibility to ensure that the little girl who is growing up in Xolobeni has just as much access to reliable and affordable electricity as her counterpart in Sandton.
