As electricity in South Africa transitions to a more open market-driven system, it has many implications for the electricity distribution industry, particularly municipalities, with stakeholders working on a reform roadmap for the distribution industry to ensure municipalities remain financially sustainable. National Energy Regulator of South Africa (Nersa) electricity regulation interim executive manager Welile Mkhize noted during an address at the Association of Municipal Electricity Utilities convention on October 21, that many metropolitans and municipalities were facing volumetric risk with electricity revenues given the current structure of their tariffs.
State-owned utility Eskom has urged prepaid electricity customers to recode their meters by November 24, as required by the Standard Transfer Specification Association. After this deadline, meters will no longer accept electricity tokens unless they are updated to Key Revision Number 2.
The South African government is considering far-reaching changes to the way public procurement of independent power producer (IPP) generation capacity is being carried out so as to accelerate deployments in a way that navigates the country’s prevailing grid constraints, while also creating the certainty needed to support green industrialisation. The changes were considered necessary to facilitate the procurement of some 10 GW of additional renewables capacity covered by the Ministerial determinations issue to enable procurement, including capacity available for re-allocation from previous bidding rounds where projects were either not selected or did not advance to construction.