Professor Sampson Mamphweli of the South African National Energy Development Institute says bringing in additional energy capacity will give Eskom an opportunity to fix its currently failing coal fleet.
This as government is this month expected to release bid window seven which is targeted at injecting additional solar and wind energy capacity under the Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme.
The anticipated announcement comes as the country is thrown back into intense levels of stage 6 load shedding.
Last month, Electricity Minister Kgosientso Ramokgopa said a formal announcement on the IPP project was in the pipelines.
Among other proposals, Ramokgopa’s has recommended for the procurement of 15 000 megawatts of renewable energy beyond the seventh round of IPP auctions.
Mamphweli says, “The energy action plan announced by President [Cyril] Ramaphosa last year puts emphasis around fixing the existing coal fleet as well as bring in new generation among other things and bid window seven in this particular instance would be very much helpful in bringing in new generation capacity. Eskom needs between 4 000MW and 6 000MW for them to be able to avoid load shedding but that’s also dependent on the maximum operation of the coal fleet as provided for in the Integrated Resource Plan. The coal fleet needs to be operating above 70% energy availability factor.”
The country is currently on stage 6 of rolling black outs.
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