{"id":643458,"date":"2026-04-28T16:02:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-28T14:02:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=643458"},"modified":"2026-04-28T16:08:48","modified_gmt":"2026-04-28T14:08:48","slug":"new-energy-company-ready-to-take-on-eskom-and-shake-up-south-africas-electricity-market","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/energy\/643458-new-energy-company-ready-to-take-on-eskom-and-shake-up-south-africas-electricity-market.html","title":{"rendered":"New energy company ready to take on Eskom and shake up South Africa’s electricity market"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Blu Label Unlimited’s BluEnergy has secured a multi-year energy trading licence from NERSA and is ready to deliver renewable energy solutions in South Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Blu Label Unlimited is well-known for its prepaid airtime and electricity vouchers, as well as for its acquisition of a large stake in Cell C.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The company is the dominant player in South Africa’s prepaid voucher and distribution sector, generating R108 billion in revenue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“We do between 50% and 55% of all prepaid distribution in South Africa’s telecommunications market,” said Blu Label co-CEO Brett Levy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“We also do around 65% of all prepaid electricity distribution in the country, and service 35 million customers monthly.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite this success, Levy is particularly bullish about their new BluEnergy division, which he described as a unicorn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BluEnergy’s new National Energy Regulator of South Africa (NERSA) trading license enables it to participate in South Africa’s power sector reform.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It can now deliver renewable energy solutions across municipalities and independent power producers (IPPs).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The company’s strategy is to roll out a large number of small-scale renewable energy power stations ranging from 10 MW to 20 MW.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This strategy has many benefits over the current model, where independent power producers build large-scale power plants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Smaller power plants are quicker to build and can supply individual nodes rather than merely feeding into the grid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Our core goal is to, over time, build 1,000 MW through a combination of 10 MW and 20 MW small-scale power stations,” Blu Label co-CEO Mark Levy said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BluEnergy’s plan<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
Blu Label co-CEO Mark Levy<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

South Africa’s electricity is currently supplied by Eskom through a top-down pyramid with multiple layers of distribution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eskom and IPPs feed into the national grid, which in turn supplies South Africa’s nine provinces and all municipalities in these provinces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Each municipality then distributes the electricity to households and businesses through various substations, which Levy described as nodes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are approximately 3,000 of these nodes across South Africa, which are run by the 257 municipalities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is planning to build small power stations, typically between 10 MW and 20 MW, which will provide electricity directly to the substations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“We will go to a node and offer to supply 10 MW, 20 MW, or 30 MW, which frees up the municipality’s electricity for other uses,” Levy said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“This will give the municipality a saving of 10% to 15% over the current rates and have the benefit of supplying green energy.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BluEnergy is partnering directly with municipalities to bypass the complexity of feeding electricity into the national grid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Blu Label already has an extensive prepaid electricity voucher system, which generates revenue and provides intelligence regarding electricity use in an area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Because you have the cash flow security of vending, you can have any bankable project with the cash flow to fund the capital expenditure,” Levy said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This makes it easy for the company to allocate capital to build the new small-scale renewable power stations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Levy added that if they need to meet the 400 MW demand, they can build 40 x 10 MW or 20 x 20 MW power stations within a year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Building a 200 MW power station, in comparison, will take a company operating in the renewable energy space 3 to 4 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Our speed to market is much higher, and we do not have concentration risk because we will go into different nodes instead of a single node,” he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Securing land and roof space for solar power<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Mark Levy explained that it is a complex process to meet all the legislative and operational requirements to supply electricity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He explained that very few South African municipalities have a Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) mindset, which makes negotiations difficult.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another challenge is land. The company needs around 1.3 hectares of land per 1 megawatt of solar power produced.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Much of the land around municipal nodes is government-owned. However, municipalities lack dedicated leasing departments, which delays projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In these cases, BluEnergy will shift focus to private land, which then requires rezoning, which adds time and complexity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another challenge is node verification to ensure that there is capacity available at a sub-station to supply it with electricity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All these factors create tremendous complexity to a project, which is why BluEnergy has selected the City of Ekurhuleni for its first project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The City of Ekurhuleni has already issued power purchase agreements in 2017, but it has not secured any power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BluEnergy has secured roughly 60 megawatts worth of roof space for solar installations, which equates to approximately 130,000 square meters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Blu Label Unlimited\u2019s BluEnergy has secured a multi-year energy trading licence from NERSA and is ready to deliver renewable energy solutions in South Africa.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":557941,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27995],"tags":[101320,103368,4064,355,181,29901,19969,24740],"class_list":["post-643458","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-energy","tag-blu-label-unlimited","tag-bluenergy","tag-brett-levy","tag-cell-c","tag-eskom","tag-independent-power-producers-ipps","tag-mark-levy","tag-national-energy-regulator-of-south-africa-nersa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643458"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=643458"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643458\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":643660,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643458\/revisions\/643660"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/557941"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=643458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=643458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=643458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}