Legal papers served on Nersa to increase private power generation: Solidarity

Solidarity said on Thursday it has initiated legal action against the National Energy Regulator of South Africa (Nersa) to remove all bottlenecks in the way of private energy suppliers.

“When it comes to energy in South Africa, the future lies in less state and more private service delivery,” the organisation said.

Its CEO Dirk Hermann said: “The first step is to force Nersa through a disclosure process to disclose information about why so few licences have been awarded to private generators of power and so few private generation licences have been granted.

“Based on this information it will be possible to determine where the bottlenecks lie and what further steps need to be taken to remove these bottlenecks.”

Solidarity also wants Nersa to account for why no guidelines on feed-in and wheeling tariffs have been published.

“The most significant protest action against the current power situation in the country lies in generating power oneself. Through our application we want to enable everyone, especially entrepreneurs who want to generate power, to do so. However, we cannot expect entrepreneurs to make huge investments if they do not have the ability to estimate the return on such investments. We therefore lack clear, reliable guidelines that make it possible to calculate such risk,” Hermann said.

While Eskom will always be part of the South African power supply mix, he said, the private sector’s share will have to increase drastically to ensure a sustainable power supply.

TimesLIVE