Over 1,000km of transmission lines planned for South Africa

Energy and Electricity Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa has announced South Africa’s plans for an independent transmission provider (ITP) project to allow for private sector participation in procuring 1,164km of transmission infrastructure.

“Transmission infrastructure will be procured from private sector participants through what we call independent transmission providers,” Ramokgopa said in a press briefing this week.

“The ministry is mandated to procure, so we do so. The National Transmission Company of South Africa (NTCSA) then buys what we would have procured following the most cost-effective, fair, and competitive tendering procedures.”

This follows a determination gazetted by Ramokgopa on 28 March under section 34 of the Energy Regulation Act.

This allows the minister, in consultation with the regulator, to procure new capacity or transmission infrastructure when they determine that the continued uninterrupted supply of electricity is threatened.

In the determination, Ramokgopa outlines the need for 400 kilovolts of transmission lines with a length of roughly 1,164km divided into seven corridors in the Northern Cape, North West, and Gauteng provinces.

This will also require 2,630 mega volt-amperes of transformers.

Ramokgopa said this transmission expansion would help make 3,200MW of generation capacity available to the national grid, equivalent to two-thirds of a fully functioning Kusile Power Station.

The minister explained that expanding the national transmission network is key to the development of the economy.

“For the South African economy to grow, we need to unshackle it from the structural constraints, which are electricity and the inefficiencies on the logistical side,” Ramokgopa said.

“The second is greater investment by the private sector. The R1 trillion investment over the medium term that the President and Finance Minister announced is the government’s contribution to infrastructure.”

“However, we need significantly more than that to achieve this,” he added.

He also emphasised the importance of domesticating the production of what will required for these construction projects to prevent exporting job opportunities.

This infrastructure is in critical need, given the slew of independent power provider (IPP) projects set to come online in the near future.

Krutham managing director Peter Attard Montalto recently said that Eskom needs to build roughly 2,500km of transmission lines annually. However, it can only do around 300km per year.

“We need to unlock a lot of this future capacity appearing in the IRP. Renewables spread out around the entire country, batteries spread out around the entire country, and exciting new things like pumped storage,” he said.

“To connect it all, we need a vastly upgraded grid, and everyone has acknowledged this. Actually making it happen is proving to be slightly more complex and slightly more of a knotty issue than it should otherwise be.”

Montalto says it will be critical for the private sector to get involved through independent transmission power projects, as is common in many other countries.

“Eskom is only able to build around 300km per year of new lines currently. They need around 2,500km per year built,” said Montalto.

“The model it has chosen, which is to internally manage everything and fund everything of its own balance sheet, is simply not going to hit that pace.”

“We’re going to need new models. We’re going to need the private sector doing independent transmission power projects. That’s how you roll out grids very quickly,” he added.