Wind turbines are shown at the San Gorgonio Pass wind farm in Palm Springs, California, US. File photo: BLOOMBERG/BING GUAN
President Cyril Ramaphosa has lifted the threshold for companies to produce their own electricity without a licence to 100MW, in a surprise announcement that will be much celebrated by business. Embedded generation — when a company produces electricity for its own use or for use by others — is widely regarded as the quickest way to bring additional megawatts onto the grid. Companies, mines and farms are believed to have 5,000MW in pent-up projects, which could be released if licensing requirements were lifted.
Eskom was on stage 3 load-shedding on Thursday, dropping 3,000MW of demand from the grid to avoid it being overloaded.