South Africa To Allocate 5.2GW of Renewable Energy in the Sixth Round of REIPPPP

The president of South Africa announced a package of policies this week to deal with a wide range of grid blackouts, including a commitment to double the volume of the sixth round of REIPPPP, and the tender volume of wind and solar power generation will double from the original plan of 2.6GW to 5.2GW. In addition, South Africa also announced plans to completely cancel the licensing requirements for distributed solar and wind power generation.

In addition, the government will remove the licensing exemption threshold for embedded generation and introduce a feed-in tariff (FiT) mechanism for rooftop solar to give private generators more benefits and promote investment to address electricity shortages. While the above projects do not require a license, all new generation projects must still be registered with the regulator and comply with technical requirements for grid connection and environmental legislation.

* The sixth round of PV tender volume was originally 1GW, and the total capacity rose while the PV capacity is not yet clear.

In March 2021, the South African Risk Mitigation Independent Power Producer tender (RMIPPPP) awarded a total of 1,996MW of power. Due to the urgency of grid connection, the selected projects must be financially closed by the end of July 2021 and the power generated by the projects will be connected to the grid from August 2022.

Source: DMRE

In August 2021, South Africa amended the Electricity Regulation Act?to extend the limit of generation licenses required for private power projects from 1MW to 100MW. The National Energy Regulator of South Africa (NERSA) approved the first two 100MW projects in May 2022 to sell power to mining company Tronox Mineral Sands. The accelerated approval process for generation licenses is expected to provide a significant boost to the South African PPAs market. We expect South Africa will install 1-1.5GW of new PV per year over the next three year.

Source:?SAPVIA