POLL | Will a second state power utility help fix SA’s energy crisis?

While South Africans wait for President Cyril Ramaphosa to announce plans to resolve the power crisis, mineral resources and energy minister Gwede Mantashe is reportedly in talks with the president over the establishment of a “second Eskom’’.

The additional state-owned utility will work alongside Eskom and apparently focus entirely on generating electricity and building more power stations. 

Mantashe told the Sunday Times the country still needs “baseload”, an apparent reference to burning coal.

“What we are suggesting — it’s not a decision yet — is let’s have a second generation company of the state and that company must focus on baseload and there must be a build programme for power stations,” he said.

“We can’t allow power stations to only hear decommission. We must also have a build programme and we think if Eskom has no capacity, let’s start a second generation company.”

The transmission and distribution of electricity would lie elsewhere, in line with government’s plan to unbundle Eskom.

Manthashe’s comments drew mixed reaction online, with some claiming it would improve power supply and others claiming it was doomed to fail and “another excuse for dodgy dealings”.

The Sunday Times reported that among the key proposals before an interministerial task team are:

• increasing the threshold for embedded generation from the current 100MW, or scrapping it altogether;
• a temporary exemption from local content requirements for the construction of new energy projects or storage capacity;
• doing away with or relaxing registration processes of the National Energy Regulator of SA that are delaying new renewable energy projects;
• streamlining environmental and water approval processes for new renewable energy projects; and
• subsidising households and businesses to install roof solar panels and sell excess power to the grid.

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