The SA Renewable Energy Council’s Terence Govender: looking to Gwede for the green light
Minister needs to press ‘start’ on a new round of renewable energy
● There’s no excuse for the government further delaying the next round of procurement for renewable energy, says Terence Govender, chair of the South African Renewable Energy Council.
“The Integrated Resource Plan [IRP] needed to be approved by cabinet and gazetted. That’s now out of the way. There’s no excuse for further delaying.”
After an almost 10-year wait since the last IRP, the government’s new long-term energy plan finally became law last week. It increases the level of renewables in the national energy mix from less than 5% to 33% by 2030.
It also warns that SA faces a four-year power gap. Govender says that the procurement of new solar and wind energy is the government’s only hope of plugging this gap any time soon.
But he says even if mineral resources & energy minister Gwede Mantashe were to announce a new procurement round immediately, it would take at least two years for renewables to come to the rescue.
“Within two years you can add megawatts to the grid. If you don’t do it now, two years from now we could be in even bigger trouble.”
The industry has been pleading with the government to implement a new procurement round since the last round, round four, added 4,000MW to the national grid in 2016.
Had the government responded with a more appropriate sense of urgency, there would be no load-shedding and no energy gap, he says.
“We’ve called on the minister for an urgent round five so we can help government minimise load-shedding.”
The industry is happy with the latest IRP, which it believes is a step in the right direction. It suggests the government is “seeing the bigger picture” and understands the contribution renewables can make.
“But the IRP is only the first step in the process. Now it has to be implemented. The minister needs to act, he needs to make a determination.”
The expectation was that this would have happened by now.
“It’s already very late. I think government knows this. There’ve been calls from all sides of the sector for a round five. They’ve heard the call. It’s just for them to move now,” says Govender.
Had the government not ignored “pleas” made by the renewable energy sector since at least 2016, renewables would have been ready to fill the gap the government is now warning about immediately, he says.
“We could definitely have had plants coming online now.”
The industry has developed a pipeline of projects which have the necessary permits and are ready to go.
“If there’s a call for such projects they’re in a state of readiness.”
Although the commercial terms will still have to be looked at, “from a practical and technical point of view they’re ready to go”.
It should never have taken so long, he says.
“In SA, which has had these massive energy gaps, companies have invested money in local production and equipment, all of which has been put on hold while waiting for a new procurement round.”
The IRP, which provides for an additional 6,000MW for solar photovoltaic, 14,000MW for wind, as well as allocations for distributed generation and battery storage, and is “a good IRP to start off with”, is but one step in the process, he says.
“The minister now has to make a determination on what he wants to procure, and then go out and procure it.”
There’s about 4,000MW of renewables on the grid currently, which has greatly reduced the severity of load-shedding, he says.
“If government procures urgently we’re two or two-and-a-half years away from putting extra megawatts on the grid.
“You can fast-track it as much as you like.
But the minister has to make a determination, he has to call for the project.”
Construction times for renewable projects are very fast compared with coal and nuclear projects.
“The quickest way by far to put extra megawatts on the grid is renewables.”
An “urgent procurement round five would have benefited the country by keeping prices down and keeping the momentum going so that we would not end up in a situation like we’re in today”.
Project developers have been focusing on other countries because of the lack of movement in SA, but they’re in a state of readiness to proceed here should they get the green light, he says.
“It is now in the hands of the minister. He has the IRP, it’s been approved and gazetted. He now has to make his determination.” How long might this take?
“How long is a piece of string? We hope he makes a determination asap, but what government does and how they do it is something completely out of our control,” says Govender.
He refuses to speculate on the causes for the delay, though politics, ideology and suspicion of the private sector are all believed to be major factors.
“We’ll have to see what the minister does. We’ve got a new minister, a new administration. He’s moved pretty fast since coming into office in getting the IRP approved. We have a very good procurement programme.
“But the minister now needs to make a procurement call.”
Govender says he’s not concerned that solar and wind don’t figure more prominently in the IRP.
“The IRP is a living document. It will change as the years go by. At least the country has an approved document. That’s a starting point.”
But he is disappointed that there’s no concentrated solar power in the IRP, or recognition of its contribution to the grid internationally.
The IRP may not reflect current research, but “we’re happy to feed all that current experience to the government, and see what the minister does from there”.
Govender, who has a master’s degree in electrical engineering from Wits University and 20 years’ experience in Eskom, the department of energy and the private sector, says international experience suggests that renewables could meet all the country’s energy needs.
“The technology has advanced to the extent that in some parts of the world they’re deploying 800,000MW of hybrid projects, CSP, PV, [concentrated solar power, photovoltaic] wind.”
Meanwhile, a green light from the minister would be good.
If the government procures urgently we’re two … years away from putting extra MW on the grid Terence Govender
Chair of the South African Renewable Energy Council