- The commencement of trading today, 1 July 2024, by the new National Transmission Company of South Africa (NTCSA) marks a long-awaited milestone in the restructuring of Eskom and the country’s energy transition.
- President Ramaphosa announced the seperation back in February 2019. Read more
- The NTCSA will operate as a stand-alone independent system operator and independent market operator in South Africa after being fully unbundled from Eskom.
- A twelve member board was appointed for the NTCSA earlier this year. Read more
Last week the NTCSA signed a 101 Transformer Panel contract, which is one of the key initiatives to support a faster and scaled-up roll-out of the Transmission Development Plan (TDP). The 101 Panel Transformer contract will be used to procure approximately 34 transformers that are part of the priority program. The various companies will compete for various batch orders of transformers. The first batch order of 26 transformers is expected to be placed by July 2024 and will enable the delivery of approximately 28,000MW to the grid by the 2028 financial year.
Much work to be done
The NTCSA needs to add more than 1500 km of new transmission lines annually over the next ten years. This is to ensure transmission capacity to accommodate more than 50 GW of new generation power which will mainly come from intermittent renewable energy (wind and solar projects). Currently, Eskom’s transmission division is adding 300 km of new power lines annually. In the last ten years, only 4 347 km of new power lines were added.
Along with transmission line capacity, more than 122 600 MVA transformation capacity is needed, representing 77% of Eskom’s current installed base of just over 160 000 MVA. In the last ten years, only 19 060 MVA has been added to the grid infrastructure.
“The aim is to connect 53GW of new generation capacity over the next ten years and to achieve this, innovative project delivery models and partnerships are being explored and implemented to drive accelerated delivery of the Transmission Development Plan (TDP), including a priority programme for strategic projects,” stated Segomoco Scheppers, the acting CEO of NTCSA and Eskom’s Managing Director for Transmission.
Author: Bryan Groenendaal
