In a surprise move, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced on Thursday that the licence-exemption cap on self- or distributed-generation plants would be increased from 1 MW to 100 MW to help address the country’s electricity crisis, which has been weighing down economic growth and confidence for more than a decade. The increase, which would be facilitated by an amendment to Schedule 2 of the Electricity Regulation Act “within the next 60 days or sooner”, exceeds calls made by organised business and labour to increase the threshold to at least 50 MW, as well as allows the so-called embedded-generation plants to both wheel that electricity through the grid and sell it to nonrelated offtakers.
