In May last year, the Energy Minister gave permission for the National Energy Regulator of South Africa (Nersa) to licence 500 MW of small-scale embedded generation (SSEG) projects, sized between 1 MW and 10 MW, without the need for the Minister to sign it off.
Although national government has opened the door for municipalities to procure electricity from independent power producers (IPPs), a lot of “regulatory ironing out” still needs to happen before power purchase agreements (PPAs) can be signed.