Cape Town - Trade union Solidarity has said the large-scale entry of small power producers into power generation is needed to resolve the country’s power crisis and is urging small power producers to apply in their hundreds for generation permits to enable this.
Solidarity said it would establish a help desk to help applicants when they are applying for permits. The union would also urgently investigate training in power generation and developing of components to stimulate generation of power.
The union said following President Cyril Ramaphosa’s announcement in June 2021 of a 100 megawatt cap for embedded generation, there were no further statutory restrictions preventing small power producers from applying in their hundreds for generation permits.
Speaking at the launch of a report by the Solidarity Research Institute (SRI) on the Eskom power crisis, Solidarity chief executive Dirk Hermann said the union would become involved in power generation itself through the development company Kanton, where it is the main shareholder.
Hermann said: “Our members’ jobs and income are being destroyed on a large scale as a result of the power crisis. The biggest act of job protection we can undertake right now is to do everything possible to feed power into the system.”
The report predicts that from now until 2035 South Africa will have to generate almost as much power from the private sector as Eskom is producing at the moment if a power crisis is to be averted.
SRI head Connie Mulder said: “Phase 6 of load shedding will become the norm and if the current trend continues more extreme phases will be part of our future. South Africa’s generation capacity is currently 9.7% lower than in 2012 while the population has grown by more than 8 million people.”
The SRI report said the government’s Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) of 2019 is flawed and incomplete. The IRP is a road map of the future of South Africa’s generation capacity.
Meanwhile, civil society has urged Energy Minister Gwede Mantashe to take immediate action to allow all renewable energy and storage provided for in the IRP 2019 to be built and connected to the grid.
The call was made by an informal coalition of activist groups including the Centre for Environmental Rights, Extinction Rebellion Cape Town, the Green Connection, the Koeberg Alert Alliance and the SA Faith Communities Environment Institute.
In an open letter to Mantashe, the activists cited section 34 of the Energy Regulation Act, which provides for the minister of energy to sign a determination before any large new generation capacity (over 100MW) can be built.
The organisations gave Mantashe 10 days, until July 17, to issue this determination and said that if their demand was not met, they would urge Ramaphosa to instruct the minister to do so immediately.
They said it was necessary to lift the limit for companies to produce their own electricity without a licence from 1MW to 100MW.
mwangi.githahu@inl.co.za