In pursuit of incentivizing further investment and development across the country’s renewable energy landscape, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, has confirmed that the government is working towards removing the licensing threshold for embedded power generation completely.
Speaking to Parliament, the President stated that following the amendment of Schedule 2 of the Electricity Regulation Act and the subsequent decision to lift the licensing threshold from 1 MW to 100 MW in 2021, a strong pipeline of renewable energy projects to the tune of 9,000MW was launched by private players across the market.
The amendment enabled private renewable developers and individuals to generate power up to 100 MW without a license, feeding excess power into the national grid and selling electricity to multiple customers.
Following the success of this amendment, the President confirmed that action was being taken to remove the licensing threshold entirely through further reforms to Schedule 2 of the Electricity Regulation Act, thereby providing private players with the tools they need to develop both small and large-scale projects across the country’s renewable energy space.
“These measures will enable significantly more generation capacity to be added to the grid from independent power producers,” he said.
In conjunction with the removal of the licensing threshold, the President emphasized that the government was improving the registration process for private embedded generation projects. Led by the National Energy Regulator of South Africa, the country has simplified the registration process with the aim of shortening timeframes for project approval and development.
These measures represent a significant step towards bringing new supply online and mitigating the country’s ongoing energy crisis.
