- Eskom to lease land for green power development.
- Private businesses can now generate up to 100MW.
Eskom has begun an auction process to make the land surrounding its power stations available to private investors for renewable energy generation. “The land – which is located in Mpumalanga – will be available for lease in a competitive bidding process and will be offered to the private sector for purposes of generating electricity from renewable technologies for own consumption or sale to third parties,” the utility emphasised in a statement, released alongside its half-year results for the six months ended in September.
The initiative arose following the recent amendment to the Electricity Regulation Act, allowing private businesses to generate up to 100MW of their power without requiring a licence from the National Energy Regulator.
The availability of Eskom-owned land to near-ready projects will eradicate a significant barrier to investment and go a long way to resolving the well-documented power crisis in the country, which is faced with an urgent and critical need for additional generation capacity, the utility said.