Ramaphosa’s ‘Energy Action Plan’ — how is it faring half a year later?

Energy Action Plan - A roadmap to end load shedding. Graphic: Jocelyn Adamson

By Ethan van Diemen

22 Jan 2023

While South Africa is roiled by daily bouts of rolling blackouts, the National Energy Crisis Committee on Thursday shared a progress update on President Ramaphosa’s Energy Action Plan, first announced in July 2022.

If you’re reading this in South Africa and you’re not completely off the grid, you’ve had your power turned off every day this year. At present, 2023 is poised to be even worse than 2022 in terms of rolling blackouts. This is even though President Cyril Ramaphosa announced in July 2022 what he called an “Energy Action Plan”.

See more in Daily Maverick: “Eskom quickly backpedals on statement on permanent load shedding for two years, hints at 'good performance' incentives for staff”

ramaphosa energy Energy Action Plan - A roadmap to end load shedding. (Graphic: Jocelyn Adamson)

So what is the status of this plan? What has happened since its announcement and what is the ANC-led government doing and going to do to end the worsening 15-year-old crisis it has failed to resolve?

Read more in Daily Maverick: “Here it is: Ramaphosa’s ‘energy action plan’ to end SA’s rolling blackouts”

This is what the National Energy Crisis Committee (Necom) says:

This year, the plan is to secure up to 8,822 megawatts (MW) of capacity through a mixture of importing power from other countries, private sector embedded generation, bringing most of Kusile’s units online and securing up to 1,350MW through emergency generation.

In 2024, the committee envisions a slight increase, with the committee hoping its efforts will secure up to 8,665MW of capacity.

A total of 794 of these megawatts will come from Bid Window 5 of the REIPPP (Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Programme) coming online, with 1,500MW from municipal procurement, roughly 775MW from emergency power projects, 1,520MW from the planned return to service of Medupi Unit 4 and Kusile Unit 6 and an additional 2,215MW from private embedded generation.

Power plant improvements

Over the course of these two years, Neocom envisions that some 6,000MW will be made available through improvements in the performance of Eskom’s power plants.

Beyond 2024, the committee foresees the country adding up to an additional 29,757MW of generation capacity.

Of this, 1,115MW will come from the remaining Bid Window 5 projects, 1,000MW will come from Bid Window 6, 9,500MW will come from additional bid windows for wind, solar and gas, 4,000MW will come from pumped storage, 3,000MW will come from “new gas facilities” in Richards Bay and/or Mossel Bay and more than 9,000MW will come from “large-scale private sector investment”.

Read more in Daily Maverick: “Eskom reality check: it will NOT get better any time soon, regardless of SA’s WEF sales pitch/PR”

But what progress has been made since July 2022?

According to the Necom, since July, the government has “signed project agreements for 19 projects from Bid Window 5 representing 1,800MW of new capacity, and for six projects from Bid Window 6 representing 1,000MW”, while the timeframe for environmental authorisations has been reduced to 57 days for projects gazetted as “Strategic Infrastructure Projects”.

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The final amendment to Schedule 2 of the Electricity Regulation Act was also published, removing the licensing requirement for generation projects “to enable private investment”.

A new ministerial determination has been published for more than 18,000MW of new generation capacity from wind, solar and battery storage.

On the personnel end of the equation, 18 skilled specialists have been brought back into Eskom to date, “including three appointments of former Eskom employees at power station manager level for Kendal, Koeberg and Medupi” and “more than 1,000 people have offered their skills through Eskom’s crowdsourcing platform”. DM

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