The National Energy Regulator of South Africa (Nersa) has issued an updated invitation, with an earlier September 16 deadline, for written comments regarding its concurrence with new Ministerial determinations allowing for the procurement of 18 791 MW of new electricity capacity.

Nersa’s original invitation set a closing date of September 23 for the receipt of public comments, which would have been a day after the bid submission deadline for the sixth bid window (BW6) of the Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme.

Had that been the case, it would not have been possible for a new determination for solar photovoltaic (PV) to be published to allow BW6 to be doubled from 2 600 MW to 5 200 MW, as announced by President Cyril Ramaphosa on July 25, when the enlarged bid window was unveiled as part of a package of measures aimed at tackling intensifying load-shedding.

The solar PV allocation catered for under an existing determination, published in 2020, has nearly been exhausted and, absent a new determination, the IPP Office had indicated that the size of BW6 would have to be reduced to 4 200 MW.

Nersa released the updated invitation and comment deadline on Friday, August 26, shortly after Engineering News published an article highlighting the fact that the September 23 deadline was out of sync with government’s ambition to double next renewables round.

Three proposed determinations have been delivered to Nersa by Mineral Resources and Energy Minister Gwede Mantashe in line with Section 34 of the Electricity Regulation Act and cover the following capacities included in Table 5 of the 2019 edition of the Integrated Resource Plan (IPR 2019):

• 14 791 MW of ‘Storage’, ‘PV’ and ‘Wind’, for the years 2024 to 2030;
• 3 000 MW in accordance with the heading labelled ‘Gas/Diesel’, for the years 2024 to 2027; and
• 1 000 MW in accordance with the heading ‘Other Distributed Generation, Co-Gen, Biomass, Landfill’, for the years 2023 and 2024.

Without the regulator’s concurrence, the determinations cannot be Gazetted and the new generation capacity outlined in the IRP 2019 cannot be legally procured.

Prior to Nersa’s formal request for comment on the determination, IPP Office head Bernard Magoro indicated that the office was gearing up for the enlarged bid window and he expressed confidence that it and its transaction advisers had sufficient capacity to complete bid evaluations within two months of the bid submission date.

He also confirmed that September 15 had been set as the last date for compulsory bid registration, including payment of the bid registration fee.