NATIONAL NEWS - Load shedding can be stopped by 2024, but that will require strong leadership from the presidency to see that extraordinary interventions on many fronts are implemented without any delay, says think tank Meridian Economics.
This includes lifting the licensing exemption for generation plants from 100MW to 1000MW.
It says that without any intervention load shedding will likely increase up to four-fold in 2023, compared with 2021, up to five-fold in 2024 and up to ten-fold in 2026.
Meridian Economics’s suggested solution includes a drastic escalation of wind and solar energy, changes in the tariff regime to incentivise owners of distributed generation to push excess energy into the grid, and the removal of stumbling blocks in current government procurement from independent power producers (IPPs).
Meridian, led by respected energy expert Dr Grove Steyn, is releasing two reports (‘Resolving The Power Crisis’) that explains its research and proposals on Monday, 13 June.
Go-slow consequences
In the first report, the think tank investigated what the load shedding picture would have looked like if government’s procurement of renewable energy from IPPs continued without the interruption that came after Eskom refused to sign power purchase agreements in 2016.
They were eventually signed in 2018, but the procurement programme only recently restarted at a slow pace.
Meridian found that, if the system operator had access to 5 000 MW (equal to about two bid rounds) of additional wind and solar energy in 2021, it would not only have prevented the worst year of load shedding ever – it would have eliminated 96.5% of load shedding that year.
Combined with “a modest expansion” of Eskom’s programme to buy power back from industrial customers, demand management as well as 2 000 MW of one-hour batteries, load shedding could have been completely eliminated.
That would have come at no cost to Eskom. The utility would in fact have saved R2.5 billion due to more economical use of its coal-fired power station, open-cycle gas turbines and pump-storage plants, Meridian found.
