Warning on Mpumalanga power grid
Mpumalanga could run out of available grid capacity within the next five to six years if no new transmission infrastructure is built in the province, says Seriti Green CEO Peter Venn.
The company, which is majority-owned by coal miner Seriti Resources, is building Mpumalanga’s first wind farm. The first 155MW phase of its 900MW project will start producing power next year, and it will be sold to Seriti Resources.
Venn, who spoke to Business Day on the sidelines of the Mining Indaba in Cape Town, said the company wants to have the entire 900MW operational by the end of 2026.
Solar and wind power developers have so far favoured the Cape provinces because of their high potential for renewable energy generation, but the interest in developing wind projects in Mpumalanga is on the increase, said Venn.
Seriti Green’s project in Mpumalanga was initially greeted with scepticism, but Venn said new technology makes it increasingly viable to operate wind farms in the province at the same capacity as those in the higher wind potential areas such as the Eastern Cape, and other projects are likely in the next three to fours years.
Still, that was likely to happen at a scale that would deplete the 3GW or so of grid connection capacity available in the province within five to six years.
One of the biggest challenges facing new, large-scale renewable energy projects in SA is the lack of available capacity to connect to the grid.
In its latest generation connection capacity assessment, Eskom said total grid capacity is about 20,000MW.
More than half of that is in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng, while Mpumalanga has 3,300MW of available capacity.
The assessment initially showed that generation connection capacity in the Northern Cape, Western Cape, and Eastern Cape has been depleted, but Eskom recently published an addendum to the assessment, which indicates that introducing a 10% curtailment measure would allow for 3,470MW of new wind power projects to be connected to the grid in the Eastern Cape and the Western Cape.
Venn said that while that opening additional grid capacity, curtailment would ultimately have cost implications for Eskom.
“We absolutely have to leverage the free network that is available in Mpumalanga,” he said.
Mpumalanga will be hit hardest by the decommissioning of Eskom’s old coal-fired power stations, which adds further impetus for the development of renewable energy projects in the province. “We have a five- to seven-year period before we will see the next major decommissioning of coal-fired power plants in Mpumalanga. We really need to get renewable energy plants operating in the province before then so that communities can benefit from this,” said Venn.
Seriti is “working hard in the community” where it is building the wind farm and has, for example, set up an online database where people can register and list their skills for possible employment during the construction phase and later. More than 3,000 people are been listed on the database.
The company is also setting up an agriculture hub where local farmers will be able to hire equipment and access support services.
Venn said another challenge is the lack of co-ordination within government departments and agencies, which slowed the various authorisation and permitting processes — it took Seriti Green about five years to navigate the procedures.
In addition, there was an “enormous capacity constraint” in professional services. “There are far too few lawyers and bankers in the renewable energy space compared with the demand for such services.”
As a result of these administrative and capacity constraints, it was not likely that SA would succeed in rolling out more than 5GW of renewable energy a year, said Venn.