Pressure on from big users
Big power users, including mining houses, want government to move faster with new self-generation regulations so they are no longer at the mercy of Eskom.
Reporting to President Cyril Ramaphosa at Business Unity South Africa’s economic indaba, companies said they wanted SA’s energy plan to be within direct control of the Presidency. They asked Ramaphosa to fast-track deregulation of private sector generation.
Fumani Mthembi, founder and director of Pele Energy Group, said large power users also said it would be best if key decisions on SA’s energy mix and transition to cleaner energies were in the president’s direct control.
“The private sector, community and households need to be given the opportunity to invest in their own power generation,” said Mthembi.
Industries like mining and manufacturing have borne the brunt of SA’s power supply crisis, being forced to halt operations repeatedly in December as Eskom instituted stage 6 load shedding and brought back power cuts in January, ahead of the end of cut-free period Ramaphosa had promised the nation.
Exxaro Resources chief executive officer Mxolisi Mgojo said the instability of the power supply, as well as the cost of electricity in South Africa, meant mining companies could not process minerals inside the country.
“It has necessitated a lot of our mining companies, who otherwise would be willing and wanted to continue beneficiating their ores here in South Africa, to start exporting those beneficiation possibilities because you can’t rely on electricity and it’s very expensive,” said Mgojo.
He warned the current state of Eskom would be the final straw that would bring an already ailing mining industry to its knees.
Business leaders said they feared that stage 8 might soon become a reality if nothing was done to complement Eskom’s generating capacity. Yet private power generation remained highly regulated in SA.
For instance, the first draft of the National Energy Regulator of SA’s small-scale embedded generation rules had proposed that people who installed solar panels must register them, even when not connected to the grid.
Although that draft was withdrawn, thus exempting producers who generate less than 1 MW of power from needing licences, power-intensive industries needed to generate even more than that to sustain their own operations.
Mgojo said the mining industry had communicated to government a willingness to invest so as to be self-reliant regarding electricity.
Ramaphosa said government had begun addressing policy issues and that it was expediting issuing renewable energy producers’ licences.
– News24 Wire