Minister of Mineral Resources & Energy Gwede Mantashe has announced the winning bidders (listed in the report online) for emergency power procurement that may generate about R45bn in private sector investment and ease the chronic power shortages.

A Business Day report says the announcement included the opening of calls for bids for the fifth round of renewable power procurement.

However, energy-intensive industries will be disappointed that their calls for the licensing cap for self-generation to be lifted from 1MW to 50MW appear to have fallen on deaf ears.

Such a move could free up about 5 000MW of demand from the national grid, but Mantashe said the licence cap would only be lifted to 10MW.

The programme for risk mitigation independent power producers (IPP) procurement, an emergency power initiative, was released to the market in August with the aim of alleviating electricity supply constraints and reducing the use of diesel-based, peaking electricity generators in the medium to long term.

Mantashe also announced that a request for proposals for the procurement of 2 600MW under the procurement programme bid window five was to be released to the market at midnight last night.

Business Day says of the 2 600MW, 1 600MW will be from wind and 1 000MW from solar PV.

The closing date for these bid submissions is 4 August 2021.

Mantashe said the government intends to release four more requests for proposals within the next 12 months. These will include another 2 600MW from renewable energy, 3 000MW from gas, 1 500MW from coal, and 513MW from battery storage.

Full Business Day report