Renewable Energy Council wants more action from Eskom

While reportedly heartened by President Jacob Zuma’s and Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan’s recent stated support for renewable energy expansion, the South African Renewable Energy Council (SAREC) has accused national power utility, Eskom, of failing to prioritise this expansion.

Renewable Energy Council wants more action from Eskom
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SAREC recently issued a statement highly critical of Eskom, saying that the power utility seemed to be defying Zuma in his support for growth in renewable energy production and utilisation in South Africa.

SAREC quoted Zuma as having said in his State of the Nation Address 2017 that, “Eskom will sign the outstanding power purchase agreements for renewable energy in line with the procured rounds”.

“Despite the president’s injunction, Eskom has yet to issue a single IPP (independent power producer) with an updated budget quote. Eskom managers report that the Eskom board and interim CEO have yet to approve the formal issuance of these quoted,” said SAREC’s chairperson, Brenda Martin.

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In its statement, SAREC said that before a power purchase agreement could be signed, Eskom first had to finalise budget quotes for each IPP; A budget quote was Eskom’s quoted cost to connect a new renewable energy plant to the national power grid.

A spokesperson for Eskom told Farmer’s Weekly via email that it would be signing deals with renewable energy projects as envisaged by the government, and that it supported the introduction of renewable energy independent power producers.

“Eskom has signed 64 power purchase agreements for a total of 4 000MW under the Renewable Energy Independent Power Producers’ Programme, and two power purchase agreements for the open-cycle turbines for a total of over 1 000MW,” the national power utility said.

It added that 2 383MW of renewable power purchase agreements had been approved by the power utility’s investment and finance committee and remained to be signed.

“Further, the National Energy Regulator of SA has provided the necessary assurances for cost recovery of these power purchase agreements,” the  Eskom email stated.

SAREC spokesperson, Mike Levington, said that Eskom’s response to Farmer’s Weekly did “not deal with the substantive obstacles that the utility and its executive management is putting in the way of the creation of jobs, community ownership and socio-economic dividends that have already been demonstrated by renewable energy IPPs from the first three rounds of the procurement programme”.

“Continuing delays will only lead to the loss of investment and jobs from this programme with the expectation of greater-than-inflation Eskom tariff increases going forward for customers,” he said.