South Africa Needs More Power Lines to Support Green-Energy Plan
- Independent power producer office calls for long-term strategy
- Nation needs more grid lines to connect 53,000 megawatts
High voltage electricity transmission towers in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Photographer: Michele Spatari/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
South Africa is running out of power lines to transmit electricity from new projects and also needs an updated plan to keep running the auctions that are responsible for getting more supply from new large-scale clean-energy facilities, the head of the bid office said.
The power-starved nation has had to sideline projects generating power from wind — a technology that provides more than 5% of South Africa’s electricity — because of a lack of grid connections in the last two bid windows of the state’s auction program, Independent Power Producer Office head Bernard Magoro said.