Question NW3978 to the President of the Republic
28 November 2022 - NW3978
Steenhuisen, Mr JH to ask the President of the Republic
With reference to his State of the Nation Address on 10 February 2022, wherein he acknowledged how load shedding was harming the economy and the society and listed several new energy generation projects that he said would be coming online over the next few years, (a) what is the status of each project and (b) by what date can the Republic expect the energy to come online, with particular reference to the (i) over 500 MW from the remaining projects in Bid Window 4 of the Renewable Energy Programme (REP), which are at advanced stages of construction, (ii) 2 600 MW from Bid Window 5 of the (REP), for which the preferred bidders were announced in 2021, (iii) up to 800 MW from risk mitigation power projects that are ready to proceed, (iv) 2 600 MW from Bid Window 6 of the REP, which was to be opened soon, (v) 3 000 MW of gas power and 500 MW of battery storage, for which requests for proposals were to be released later in 2022, (vi) estimated 4 000 MW from embedded generation projects in the mining sector and (vii) approximately 1 400 MW that was already in the process of being secured by various municipalities?
Reply:
When I delivered the State of the Nation Address in February 2022, I outlined a range of measures to address the energy shortfall and fundamentally transform the energy sector.
Since then, we have made significant progress in achieving those objectives:
i) The remaining projects from Bid Window 4 of the renewable energy programme have connected to the grid, adding over 2 000 MW of new generation capacity.
ii) The first three preferred bidders from Bid Window 5 have signed project agreements, and additional projects are expected to reach this milestone within the coming weeks.
iii) Three projects from the risk mitigation procurement programme representing 540 MW of solar PV and 225 MW of battery storage have reached financial close and commenced construction.
iv) The amount of new generation capacity procured through Bid Window 6 has been increased from 2 600 MW to 4 200 MW, with 56 bids received totalling 9 600 MW of capacity.
v) An RFP will soon be released for over 500 MW of battery storage capacity, which will be followed by a further RFP for 3 000 MW of gas power.
vi) The pipeline of embedded generation projects has more than doubled in size to 100 confirmed projects, with a total capacity of more than 9 000 MW, as a result of the removal of the licensing threshold for generation facilities.
vii) Several municipalities are at various stages in the process of procuring power independently, and an MFMA circular has been released to clarify the requirements for municipal procurement.
These measures will enable significantly more generation capacity to be added to the grid from independent power producers to close the energy shortfall.