Eskom transmission grid nightmare

South Africa has a slew of independent power provider (IPP) projects set to come online, but Eskom can’t meet the transmission build rate required for the country to benefit from these projects.

Speaking to Cape Talk, Krutham managing director Peter Attard Montalto said the power utility 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 that’s 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 together, 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.

Earlier this year, the National Transmission Company South Africa (NTCSA) set aside R112 billion for the Transmission Development Programme (TPD), which aims to bring 30GW of utility-scale renewal generation online within five years.

Looking further ahead, the country wants to bring as much as 53GW online over the next 10 years through the TDP.

NTCSA chair Priscillah Mabelane agrees that this will require involvement from private companies.

“Despite being a newly formed entity, the NTCSA has already made substantial progress in implementing its strategy,” said Mabelane.

“We have approved R112 billion for TDP investment in the next five years.”

The NTCSA’s official launch statement acknowledged that the entity must accelerate the construction of new transmission development infrastructure to execute the TDP successfully.

“It is anticipated that in the next five years, there will be 30GW of utility-scale renewables connected to the grid by the end of 2029,” it said.

“A step change will be required to ensure that this new generation can connect to the electricity transmission grid and to get it to the point of demand.”

A very slow start

In July 2023, South Africa unveiled its plans to expand its transmission network by more than 14,000km and increase the number of transformers sixfold by 2033.

This includes building a vast network comprising 132kV, 275kV, 400kV, and 765kV transmission lines over the next 10 years.

This was revealed by the then-Electricity Minister in The Presidency and now-Electricity and Energy Minister, Kgosientsho Ramokgopa.

However, it started very slowly, with Eskom achieving just 74.4km of the 166km planned for the 2023/24 financial year. At the time, an expansion rate of 1,400km a year was required.

It also completed only three of the five projects it had planned for the year.

Ramokgopa’s announcement came months after Montalto revealed that Eskom’s transmission grids in several provinces were full or close to it.

This means that the ongoing and future IPP projects in provinces like the Northern, Western, and Eastern Cape won’t be able to distribute power generated to the rest of the country.